


Gaea

by baybelletrist



Series: The Skollii [1]
Category: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Gen, Genetically Engineered Beings, Kidnapping, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Psychic Abilities, Telepathy, black ops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-13
Updated: 2014-03-13
Packaged: 2018-01-15 14:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 46,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1307419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baybelletrist/pseuds/baybelletrist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An investigation on Mars leads the Series Five team to a fugitive girl with dangerous psi powers--but they quickly discover the girl isn't the real threat. Their search for the truth takes them to secrets someone wants to keep hidden at any cost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted to the Ranger-L mailing list in... 1997? and then revised later.
> 
> The original acknowledgements:
> 
> Kat, my fantastic head beta reader, helped me with so many lines and so much plot line work, on both the original and the rewrite, that I'm in debt to her forever. Annie O, Lady Niko, Michelle, and Jess all gave me much-needed hints, help, and feedback. Without our Most Excellent Dr. Roxie, certain portions of this narrative wouldn't work nearly as well. Any factual screwups related to psychology are mine, not hers. Finally, AKK let me play with her Martian dust shields when I did the rewrite, plus caught some rather large and really silly mistakes so that I could fix them before the repost.
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks, all of you.

BETA Mountain, Earth

7/28/2098, 1833

 

 

Doc Walter Hartford's wrist comm beeped.

"Figures," he growled around a mouthful of bristles and toothpaste. Hastily he spit and set his toothbrush down by the sink before answering. Can't even get a minute to brush my teeth... We just _got_ home. He took a deep breath and forced a smile onto his face.

"Hartford here."

Captain Zachary Foxx's face took shape in the miniature screen. "Doc, we need you up in Commander Walsh's office," he said. "Niko and I were here for a briefing when—well, you'll see when you get here."

Doc saluted and picked up his toothbrush once more. "Be there in five minutes," he said, and signed off. "Or maybe ten," he added under his breath. "Can't show up cranky."

 

 

Doc met Shane Gooseman in the hallway outside Walsh's office.

"You know what's up?" he asked with a wave of greeting, noting with a small, private grin that Goose's hair was damp.

"Nope," Goose answered. The door slid open to admit them into Walsh's office, where the others stood waiting for them. Doc and Goose barely had time to come to attention before Commander Walsh pressed a key on the command pad of his desk. An image of a building in flames came up on the large viewscreen on the wall.

"Twenty minutes ago we received a high-priority request for assistance from the Mars City Police Department," Walsh said. "Yesterday evening they logged reports of shots fired in this building in Mars City shortly before the place went up—'went up' being the operative phrase. Witnesses say the entire building was in flames in a matter of a few minutes. No explosion, just flames. They're asking us to investigate."

"But this sounds like a job for the fire department, Commander," Doc put in, puzzled. "Why do they need us?"

"This vid came from the local news media," Walsh answered, indicating the screen. "But a resident from the building across the street from the burning building caught _this_ with his personal vidcam."

He pressed another key, and the image on the wall changed. This video was grainier, with poor-quality sound, and had obviously been shot from a different angle than the news vid. The flames danced and shivered, so hot that its cracks and pops sounded clearly even over the hissing audio track.

Doc was just opening his mouth to say "And?" when he saw it.

From the flames a figure emerged.

Doc's eyes widened and he flinched—before he realized that the person seemed untouched by the fire.

The figure ran several feet from the burning building to crouch near a parked car, where it began scanning its surroundings. The video image jerked noticeably as the cameraman started, obviously surprised, and then trained his viewfinder on the hunched form. As the figure moved again, sprinting away from the burning building, a faint nimbus of light became visible around it.

"Holy—" muttered Goose.

"Force field?" Doc wondered softly, but looked over to see Niko shaking her head.

"Keep watching," she whispered.

Suddenly the figure stopped, whirled, and looked upward toward the camera's lens. As the cameraman began to zoom in on it, a blinding flash of light lit up the viewscreen, and when it cleared, the person was gone. Suddenly the image jounced and shook, as though the person running the camera had staggered, and then it froze as the recording apparently ended.

Walsh pressed a key, and the viewscreen went dark.

"What the heck was that?" Doc demanded.

"That's what I want you to find out," answered Walsh. "Analyze that video, gather all the information you can, and find out what burned down a multistory building in spite of its fire suppression systems. I also want you to track down whoever walked out of those flames and temporarily blinded a Mars City resident. And do it quickly. They've found four bodies so far, and the mayor is screaming."

Goose stirred restlessly. "Sir—" he began.

"I know, Ranger Gooseman," Walsh cut him off. "Analyze the evidence first. As soon as you've got anything solid, all of you," and his gaze swept across the four Rangers, "are to head for Mars. Any questions?"

"Got vid?" asked Doc. Walsh ejected a storage chip from the player and handed it over. Pocketing it, Doc glanced around at his teammates.

"Dismissed," Walsh said. "Go get me some results."

The Rangers saluted and filed out of Walsh's office.

 

 

 

Series Five Rangers' office

1907

 

 

Doc stepped over to the reader at his desk and took the chip out of his pocket.

"Hang on a minute, Doc," Zachary said. "Niko, can you do a scan on this?"

Niko smiled. "If you want a reading of the commander, sure." She gestured toward the chip. "He requested that video data from the Mars City police, and they sent it as a transmission. So it's at least a copy, if not a copy of a copy—and the person who made the original recording never touched this chip. When I scan something, I receive impressions of the people who touched it or were nearby when someone else touched it, usually people who meant something to the owner. Basically, as far as psychometry is concerned, there's no connection between the cameraman and that specific chip. I'd have to scan the original to get anything useful."

"It was worth a try," Zachary said. "I never knew your powers had that limitation, Niko."

"You knew there had to be some reason why Niko isn't running the world, Captain," Doc cracked, and fed the chip in to his comm unit. Zach headed for his desk and the comm station there. Goose, arms folded, leaned against the wall and watched, his face sardonic. Niko perched on her desk.

"I want to talk with the cameraman when we get to Mars City," Zach said. "I'll get on the horn to arrange an interview while you work on that video, Doc."

"Right." Doc picked up his CDU, touching his badge with his free hand. "Okay, tweakers, front and center," he said. "The Doctor must operate!"

A narrow beam of light shot from the handheld minicomputer and expanded into an octahedral field filled with twinkling lights and mathematical formulae. One light, then another, grew brighter than the rest.

"What's up, Doc?" one of them asked in a shrill little voice.

"Searchlight, Pathfinder, go hit that image file. I need better resolution. Pull whatever you can get from this sad heap of electrons they're calling video."

"Right-o-rooty, Docko!" Pathfinder answered as the programs vanished into the reader's input slot. A frame of the video centered on the figure appeared onscreen. Gradually Doc's programs zoomed in on the image, resolving as they went. "This is really tough, Doc," Searchlight chirped from the guts of the reader. "The resolution blows!"

"Keep working on it," Doc answered. "Zach," he asked, glancing back over his shoulder, "any luck getting hold of the guy?"

"Mars City police put me through to his comm line, but no one answered," Zachary answered. "We can try again once we get there. In the meantime..." His voice trailed off, then rose again: "This is Zachary Foxx of the Galaxy Rangers, calling for Captain Dansky—"

"Okay, Docko, here's whatcha got," Searchlight piped up. Doc, Goose, and Niko gathered around the screen, and Zach turned from his conversation to fix his eyes on the image.

Doc sighed. "This the best we can do?"

"Garbage in, garbage out, boss," Pathfinder said. "Like he said, the resolution's bad."

Goose stared at the blurry image, eyes intent.

"It's hard to make very much out," Niko observed. Doc noticed that she was watching Goose closely from the corner of her eye. "It looks like a dark-haired woman, but it's difficult to tell anything more."

"Thanks, Captain," Zachary said into the comm, and rang off. "Well, Doc, it's more than we had," he observed, stepping closer to the screen. "Judging from the car she's next to, I'd say she's about, maybe, five-eight, five-nine, give or take a little."

"Looks about right to me," Doc agreed. "Think that's solid enough for the commander?"

Zach shrugged. "Well, it's what we have. I just talked to Captain Dansky, and he's detailed a couple of detectives to meet us at the spaceport. Pack your bags, everyone. We're headed for Mars."

 

Mars City, Mars

2308 local time

 

She wandered through the streets of one of Mars City's shopping districts, watching the evening crowds flow down the sidewalks. She could not seem to stop darting quick glances around her. That woman with the bundle of shopping bags—is she following me? She stopped to look in a display window and caught her reflection staring back from a mirrored stand. Her own frightened eyes caught at her until she jerked them away. She used the mirror to scan the street behind her and stared for a moment at a man on the sidewalk across the street. Wasn't he there four blocks back?

Stop it, stop it... They're dead, she told herself, tightening her lips against the nausea of fear. I felt them die last night. Tears rose and she forced them back. I didn't want them to die. But there are more of them looking for me...

Unbidden, a picture appeared in her mind: A pair of eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, a mouth dropped slightly open. Then a voice, deep and commanding: "Never tell anyone who you are." She flinched.

No, she told herself firmly, and pushed the picture away. He's dead. He died a long time ago.

He can't hurt you ever again.

A blast of noise jerked her head around, jolting her sharply from her disordered thoughts. Music blared from a display window filled with home vid systems. Heart hammering, she relaxed slightly, sighed and turned her mind to the immediate question of where she was going to sleep. Wonder if my apartment's safe? She shivered. If it's not...That would mean they know where I live.

A scruffy teenaged boy passing by bumped against her shoulder and mumbled an apology. She jumped again, whites showing clear around her irises, and stumbled to a bench to let her knees lose their wobble.

At least there was no one watching my locker.She shifted the bag on her shoulder to rest in her lap, hand unconsciously brushing the concealed panel she'd added.

The youth hostel? No, they might look there—and I don't want any more people to get hurt. Maybe I should sneak into one of the multiplex shopping centers after closing and find a supply closet to sleep in...

A flicker of motion caught her eye. She turned her head to look straight on at the screen of a news kiosk. She recognized the footage they were showing; it was the same image they'd been repeating, every hour on the hour, since last night: the office building where she worked—used to work, she corrected herself soberly—engulfed in flames. The unctuous face of Sabrio Hoffman, Mars City's favorite anchor, appeared below the image of the burning building. Half unwilling, she rose to look. The kiosk, sensing her approach, raised the volume slightly.

"—death count continues to rise, Mars City police are still refusing to release the details," Hoffman was saying, "but an unconfirmed report from a source inside the fire department would seem to indicate arson. Meanwhile, sources at the Mars City Spaceport confirm that a team of Galaxy Rangers has just arrived from Earth." The screen cut to an image of three men and a woman walking through the spaceport. The crowds gave them a wide berth. 

"Our sources have positively identified the Rangers as a team of specialists who handle the League's toughest cases," Hoffman's voiceover continued as the camera continued to follow the four law enforcement officers. The tallest, a blond man who looked too young to drink, let alone wear a badge, gave the camera a cold stare over his shoulder. The screen cut back to Hoffman in the studio, his face showing just the right amount of concern.

"Why have BETA's top troubleshooters been called in to investigate an 'ordinary' case of arson?" he demanded, his voice stern and indignant. "What aren't the authorities telling us? Mars TV intends to find out, because the citizens have a right to know."

Hoffman folded his hands and directed a penetrating gaze at the camera.

"I'm Sabrio Hoffman, reporting for Mars TV."

The kiosk moved on to another news item. She turned slowly and stepped away down the sidewalk, avoiding passers-by with unconscious grace.

Why? she thought. That's a good question.

She gripped the strap of her shoulder bag with both hands and tried to pretend she wasn't terrified.

 

 

 

Mars City Spaceport

2313

 

 

"No, Goose! Don't!"

Niko's voice arrested Shane Gooseman's right fist midswing. He snarled into the cameraman's face and released his grip on the front of the man's jacket. The man stumbled back and fought to catch his balance without losing hold of his camera.

"Gooseman!" Zachary barked. "At ease!"

Goose snapped to attention.

"Well!" sniffed the reporter, nose in the air. "I must say I'm disappointed to see what kind of people BETA has sent—" She broke off as Niko fixed her with icy, glittering green eyes.

"No comment. You'll have to excuse us, I'm afraid. We," and she picked up her bags again, "have work to do." The emphasis on _we_ was slight enough that one might overlook it, but the reporter flushed, her lips tightening. Niko smiled thinly.

"But Captain Foxx—"

"No comment," Zachary snapped, and set off across the concourse with Niko and Goose a step behind him. Doc paused just long enough to toss the woman a charming, apologetic smile and a shrug before trotting after the others.

"Nice PR job, my Goose man," he panted, catching up. Goose's only response was a growl.

"They're meeting us at the passenger pickup area, aren't they, Captain?" Niko asked, glancing sidelong at a glowering Goose. He caught her glance, and she jerked her eyes back to front, her face flushing.

"That's what Captain Dansky said," Zach answered, scanning the crowd ahead. "It'll be a plainclothes officer in an unmarked car, so we'll have to wait for him to find us."

"Avoiding the media zoo?" Doc wondered.

"Probably," Zach replied.

"Just as well," Niko put in, making her voice as annoyingly perky as possible. "We don't want to have to bail Goose out of jail in our first evening here." Goose rewarded her with a dirty look. Niko just smiled—and relaxed for the first time since they'd left Earth. He's handling it, she thought in relief. Then sensory memory arose, and she felt her face heat again at the thought of what had happened on the trip to Mars.

That's not all he's handled today, jeered a small voice in the back of her mind. Or all you'd like him to...

She told the small voice to shut up. In five different languages.

"Captain Foxx?"

They all turned as a low voice sounded from a polite distance away. A tall, dark-haired, rawboned man stood, hat in hand, next to a diminutive, sturdy woman of Asian descent. Niko hid a smile, for somehow he contrived to look rumpled even wearing dark, tailored trousers and a jacket over a plain white shirt, while she managed to make slim trousers and a dark red turtleneck carry the panache of a suit. Clearly clothes don't always make the man... Case in point. The man stepped forward, hand extended, a smile lighting his pale blue eyes. "I'm Detective Meeno Ridley, and this is my partner, Detective Brianna Lee. We're here to escort you to the department." He and Zach shook hands. "It's an honor to have you and your team here, Captain," Ridley continued. "If you'll come this way—"

The Rangers fell in behind Zach as Ridley led the way. Niko caught Detective Lee sizing up Goose and raised an eyebrow. Wonder what that's all about? she thought; the other woman looked at Goose not as though she liked his looks, but more as though she were solving a puzzle. The woman moved like a martial artist, and Niko wondered idly what school she followed. Hard to tell for sure. Maybe kung fu?

"You do much sparring, Ranger?" Lee asked Gooseman.

He turned his glower in her direction. "Some. Why?"

The tiny detective shrugged. "Maybe we'll work together sometime." Her dark eyes shifted to Niko, and a slight smile crept across her lips. She winked.

They had reached Ridley's sleek grey van and started loading their baggage aboard when the cry went up.

"There they are!"

Six heads turned in unison to see a veritable cavalcade of reporters and camera operators stampeding toward the van.

"Sir—" Ridley began, but Lee was too quick for him.

"In!" she barked, pitching Zach's bag into the back of the van and leaping into the driver's seat. Goose threw his bag into the rearmost seat and followed it bare moments later; after a second's startled hesitation, Niko followed. Ridley scrambled into the shotgun position and slammed the door as Zach jumped into the middle seat, dragging a protesting Doc after him.

Niko, belting herself in, yelled, "Do you really want to talk to them, Doc?"

"No!" Doc answered, voice muffled by the immediate proximity of his face to the seat cushions. Zach wrestled the door closed as Lee hit the accelerator and cut sharply away from the curb. Doc hit the floor a moment later.

"Ow!"

"Buckle up, Doc," Goose said cheerfully.

Niko leaned toward Goose. "I think she drives worse than you do, Shane," she whispered. Maybe kidding around will get us back on track.

"Yeah," he whispered back. "I think I'm in love."

She hit him.

Back on track, all right. She rubbed her knuckles.Ow.

 

 

 

Elsewhere, Mars City

7/29/2098, 0047

 

 

She tossed and turned on her makeshift pallet of paper towels, desperately tired but unable to sleep. Twice now night-shift janitorial staff had approached the supply closet, but it had taken very little effort to "remind" them that the lock was jammed and a locksmith arriving in the morning.

Why did they bring in that team of Rangers? she worried. What do they know? Do they know how the fire started?

A voice sounded in her mind: _"Never leave a trace of your presence..."_

Her face crumpled.

I didn't mean to...

She wept quietly, smothering her sobs in the cloth of her bag.


	2. Chapter 2

Mars City Police Department

7/29/2098, 0130

 

Ridley stared over his partner's shoulder at the blurred image on the screen of her handheld.

"That's the person who ran out of the building?" he asked. A passing night shift officer, coffee cup in hand, dodged neatly around him without looking up from her handheld.

The Mars City Police Department occupied five full floors at the base of one of the city's many high rises. "Holding and Interrogation take up most of two floors in the basement and subbasement, downstairs from Main," Ridley had said as they passed through the main security checkpoint at the front of the building. "Main is Booking, meeting rooms—"

"—the dog and pony show for the public," Lee cut in. "Data processing and the various department offices take up Second and Third. Main break room's on Two, gym, locker rooms and showers in Sub-one."

"This looks like one of the older buildings in this part of town," Zachary noted, glancing around at the scuffed floors and faded paint.

Lee cracked a cynical half-smile. "You don't expect the pols to build new government buildings and then let the cops move in, do you?" she asked.

They stood now in the main office area, where most of the rank and file had their workstations. Those few officers not out canvassing or on calls stood around them, listening. Looking at the image Brianna Lee held, Doc raised his hands in a shrug. "Best we could do with the video source we had. The resolution wasn't the best I could've hoped for. I even tried again on the flight out, but no dice." He slurped up the last of the soda he'd bought at a fast food joint en route from the spaceport and pitched the empty cup into a nearby recycler.

Lee shrugged. "We've got a base description: female, five-eight or so, dark hair. It's a start. We've got people canvassing right now."

"In the middle of the night," Doc noted, grinning. "That'll make us extra popular." 

Lee glanced at him. "We don't have to be popular, Ranger Hartford. We just have to arrest people who burn down large office buildings with other people inside." 

"We'd like to interview the man who took that video," Zach said. "Can you put us in touch with him?"

"We can do better," Lee said. "We caught him with a few grains of Glitter when we went for a follow-up visit, so he's got a room downstairs in the holding cells, courtesy of MCPD. You can talk to him anytime you want."

Zach stood. "Lead on."

As Ridley led the three Rangers toward the elevators, they heard Lee's voice. "Okay, people, back to work..."

"Yes, Captain," someone answered sarcastically. Ridley snorted.

"I'll run you downstairs, Captain," he said quietly to Zach. "But then I've got to finish up some paperwork and head home. Buzz me if you need anything."

"Thanks, Lieutenant," Zachary answered. They paused at the elevators, and he glanced around at his team.

"Niko, Goose, you're with me. Doc, head up to the data processing center and start reviewing the forensics reports. And have your programs run through the League databases. See if you find any significant matches. It's a long shot, but—"

"I know, Captain," Doc answered, smirking. "No drudge, no glory."

Niko groaned.

 

 

Louis Tulley was a tall, thin, sullen youth. He peered out at the Rangers from behind a screen of lank, dark blonde hair and mumbled, "Whaddaya want?"

Zach leaned both hands on the table. "You shot some video footage of the Widner Building burning down, Mr. Tulley. We'd like to talk about what you saw that night."

Tulley lowered his eyes again. "I dunno, man. Just some person, chick prob'ly, ran outta the fire and down the street. When I tried to take her pic, she, like, shone some bright light at me or somethin'. I couldn' see for a second and then when I looked again she was gone. That's it, man." He stared at the table, eyes occasionally turning toward Goose's large and intimidating presence.

Niko logged her handheld into the station net and brought up a copy of Doc's image on the interrogation room wall screen. "Can you help us refine this? Anything you could offer would be useful."

He squinted at the screen. "Like, you can't really see her face here, man. I think she was pretty young, like not even twenty maybe. But it was hard to see her face too much because of the, y'know, light." He wiggled his fingers suggestively.

"Light?" Zach asked. "You mean the field around her?"

Tulley nodded. "Shit, man, she ran outta burnin' building and she wasn't even singed. That's some slick tech I wouldn't mind playing with, man." He brightened slightly, gesturing restlessly with the hand that wasn't cuffed to the table.

"Planning on burning down any buildings?" Goose asked ominously from where he leaned against the wall. Tulley glanced nervously at him.

"No way, man, a'course not. Just, it'd be solid, y'know? You could, like, go run through fires 'n' sh—uh, stuff, an' not get burned. But I din't see that much of her face."

"Could you see anything about the shape of her face?" Niko pressed him. "Her nose or her chin?"

"Uhhh... well, like, her face was kinda like yours, I mean, not all round like my sister's ugly mug."

"An oval face? Or more angular?" Niko encouraged.

"I dunno, just not real round. An' her nose was just kinda, like, regular. Not big or anything. I guess maybe she was kinda pretty, but, y'know, it was hard to tell."

"What about her hair? We can see that it's dark. Could you tell any more about the color or the style?" she asked. Onscreen the image was shifting as the department AI's composite software interpolated Tulley's data.

"Not black," he said with certainty. "I don't think. It wasn't long like yours," and his eyes dropped to her waist for a moment, "but, like, it wasn't real short either. Sorta in between, I guess. It was in a ponytail, y'know, so I dunno for sure."

She pointed to the image onscreen. "Is this closer to the person you saw?"

He squinted. "Yeah, I think so, only... her face was, like, more bony, a little, and her hair wasn't that dark, I don't think." He watched as the changes were applied. "Yeah, man, that's kinda like her, I guess. Y'know, it was kinda dark an' hard to tell." Niko routed the new image to Doc's workstation.

Tulley stirred. "Am I in a lotta trouble, ma'am?" he asked Niko suddenly. "My lawyer din't want me to talk to you, but, y'know, if it was just about this person I din't care. But that lady cop, the little one, she said I was busted big time. So, like, am I gonna go to jail?"

Niko glanced over at Zach. "Well, that's not really in our jurisdiction, Mr. Tulley," she answered gently. "You'd have to ask the officer in charge of your case if they're planning to pursue charges. But it won't hurt your case that you helped us here today. I'm very grateful for your input." She smiled. Tulley peered at her from behind the hair and smiled back cautiously.

"So, like, is that it?" he asked.

"Yes," Zach answered. "Thank you, Mr. Tulley. Try and stay out of trouble, will you?"

"Yessir," the young man answered, retreating behind his hair. The Rangers filed out of the interrogation room.

Niko's passing generated hoots from occupants of the various holding cells, louder and more raucous than they'd been on the trip down. One especially bold youth swaggered up to the front of the cell and called, "Hey, baby, got plans for tonight?"

In a blur of motion Goose had the perp's shirt in his fist. "Yeah, she does," he snarled, squashing the youth's face against the bars. "She's got target practice. You wanna volunteer, asshole?"

"Gooseman," snapped Zach. Goose dropped the boy, who scrambled on hands and knees to the back of his cell. The Rangers left the holding area in dead silence.

Niko studied the image on her handheld screen as they took an elevator up to the data processing and records center—which, in contrast to most of the rest of the building, offered fairly modern amenities. The three Rangers passed by several banks of high-capacity data storage units, lights flickering as information flowed through. The data storage area gave way to workstations in star-shaped groups, where technicians and AIs answered queries and pulled files, and then finally to cubicles where a few officers did specialized data processing. The Rangers turned one more corner in the maze and reached the cubicle temporarily assigned to Doc.

"Doc!" Niko called. The hacker turned from his workstation, eyebrows raised inquiringly. "Did you get the composite I sent up?"

His teeth flashed in a grin that lacked some of its usual wattage. "It just got here a minute ago. It's good to have. Sorting through this many dossiers was giving my tweakers fits. You should just hear the griping."

Doc switched his workstation screen over to the new image.

"Not a bad job, Ms. Niko," he noted, rubbing his stomach absently. "The tweakers are doing a high-speed data sort. Bring it up on screen, guys, and while we're at it—when we get results, I'll have you flash 'em to the officers on the canvassing squad."

"Right, Doc!" Pathfinder squeaked.

The four Rangers watched as images flickered by, faster than the human eye could process. A small, holographic hourglass floated above the CDU, counting down the time remaining in the search. As the sand slid silently downward, Doc's forehead creased in a frown. He rubbed his stomach again, and an uncomfortable expression flitted across his face. "Man! _What_ do they put in the burgers around here?"

"Mine tasted fine," Goose said with an innocent smile. "You sure it was the burger? I'd have guessed going back for that second order of onion rings. Or maybe it was the—"

"Knock it off, my Goose man." Doc looked queasy. "It's not nice to make fun of the sick and dying, you know. And you're the last person who should be poking at other people's choice of food! You won't catch _me_ eating anchovy paste."

Niko bit her lip to keep back a sputter of laughter and rummaged in one of the pockets attached to her belt. "Here, Doc," she said, and held out an antacid. He took it with a grateful smile.

Less than three minutes later, Doc's programs flashed out of the workstation.

"No go, Doc," Pathfinder squeaked. "She ain't in here. Not even close."

Zach shook his head. "No criminal record. At least we've got a better image to work with. Doc, what did you find from the forensics report?"

"They're still working on the exact cause of the fire," Doc replied. "There were marks from stunner bolts on the walls, but those don't generally start fires. They've located the flashpoint; it looks like it started in the basement, in or near the main air conditioning unit, and then spread through the vent system. Fine way to move a fire, I must say. They've also figured out why the fire suppression system didn't come up. The network trunk was lying on the floor across the room from where schematics say it should've been."

Goose tensed. "Something ripped it off the wall?"

"Looks like," Doc affirmed, "but considering the whole place is pretty much wrecked, they're having a hard time pinning down what. They're still working over the evidence they brought back from the site. They said they'd get back to me if anything earth-shattering came up."

Zach consulted his wrist chrono. "It's 0215. The sun won't be up for a few hours yet. Guess we've got time to catch up on some of those overdue reports." He bent a stern eye on Niko and Goose, though the effect was somewhat diminished by the half-smile that quirked the corners of his mouth. Doc escaped meeting Zach's gaze by the simple expedient of keeping his own eyes fixed on his screen, but Niko saw the hacker's shoulders hunch under the weight of his captain's stare.

Niko groaned under her breath.

"Uh, Captain, I was thinking about checking out the shooting range—" Goose took a casual step away from his teammates.

"Oh, no you don't!" Doc exclaimed. "If I have to suffer through filling out reports, so do you!"

"Get to work, you three," Zachary said. "Once morning shift starts coming in, we can brief them and then go take a look at what's left of that building."


	3. Chapter 3

Site of the Widner Building, Mars City

7/29/2098, 0739

 

 

As Ridley brought the van to a halt at the curb, Doc whistled in dismay. "The newsghouls are out in force, guys. Up for running the gauntlet again?"

"Sure," answered Goose, cracking his knuckles with an unpleasant smile.

Niko, peering through the window of the van, decided that the Widner Building, even in its heyday, could never have been very impressive. Its charred, skeletal hulk squatted among buildings that had obviously been much larger even before the fire. Rubble lay everywhere, and the neighboring buildings showed signs of scorching as well. A few paint-blistered cars were still parked nearby; idly she noticed a small pile of parking tickets affixed to one of them. A yellow crime scene barrier, generated by small pylons placed every three meters, kept the camera crews and the curious out of the site.

Zach swung open the door, and as Niko's teammates piled out, Lee opened her own door and stepped out of the van. The crowd of reporters surged forward, yelling questions. She strode toward the site, shouting to the two officers guarding it, "I want a clear corridor all the way into this site from the street! Now!"

Niko watched, bemused, as the officers stepped forward and began ushering reporters and camera crews away from the van. Predictably, protests went up. Niko wrinkled her nose. "The people have a right to know!" shouted one particularly plastic-looking man. She rolled her eyes.

"Niko?"

She started and looked at Zachary, who gestured for her to join the group on the sidewalk.

"Sorry, Captain," she said as she stepped down to the curb. "Shall we head down to the basement so I can try getting a reading?"

He blew out a breath. "Are you sure you'll be all right? People died here."

"I'll be all right," she answered quietly, squaring her shoulders.

 

 

The Series Fives and Ridley scrambled gingerly into the building's basement. Goose wrinkled his nose at the pervasive reek of burnt chemicals and building materials. The rubble had been cleared from some sections of the room, but in other spots charred debris covered the floor knee-deep. Pale marker tags gleamed on the blackened flooring, marking the places where three people had burned to death. Goose stole a glance at Niko from the corner of his eye. She looked her usual calm self, but he thought he could detect faint signs of strain, as if death had an odor she could scent, one that disturbed or sickened her.

"Forensics says this was the flashpoint," Ridley explained in his deep, quiet voice, pointing to a spot near the east wall. "But why don't I let them speak for themselves?" He pulled a disc-shaped object from his pocket and bent and placed it in a clear spot on the floor before activating his commlink. Goose saw Niko cock her head curiously, and Doc leaned forward a bit to peer at it. Made of some dull metal, the thing was about the size of a large man's palm, with a crystal about two centimeters in diameter in its center.

Ridley spoke into his commlink. "Langley, you there?" he asked. "We're ready for you if you've got the time."

A thin beam of light shot from the crystal to a height of about two meters and then widened to encompass a cylindrical holographic field about a meter across. Within the light stood the image of a tall, skinny young man with straggly, dishwater-blond hair caught in a rough ponytail. He looked slightly disheveled, as if he had neglected to hang up his clothes after washing them. His shirt—a hideous and discordant pattern of lurid green, violent orange, and an unfortunate shade of pink—was buttoned unevenly. He wore an archaic pair of spectacles with small, rounded lenses. The input port at his left temple was his only visible concession to the twenty-first century.

"Hey, Ridley," he said by way of greeting, and squinted over his specs. "Those your pet Rangers? They look kinda—ordinary." Niko stifled a laugh. Goose grinned and noticed Doc was smirking openly.

"Be polite, now, Langley," chided Ridley in his mild voice. "Do you think you could talk them through what you've managed to piece together of this little mess?" His gesture took in the charred surroundings.

"Sure, Ridley," Langley answered. "We've managed to rough out a timeline. At 1718 on the 27th—that's two days ago—one of Mars City's central ops AIs routed a squeal from the Widner building AI to MCPD's central dispatch AI, reporting shots fired. 7.6 seconds later, the Widner building dropped off the 'net. Dispatch AI Claudie spent 8.264 seconds querying the Widner building AI without getting an answer before sending a patrol car to check things out. By the time the car got there, the building was what we call in the forensics trade fully involved, which is to say toast."

"Your report said the box containing the main trunk line into the building was torn off the wall," said Doc.

"Yeah, man," Langley confirmed. "Schematics place it on the east wall—" a holographic image formed "—and we found it lying in the northwest quadrant of the room. From the damage, looks like somebody ripped it off the wall—you can see the shearing on the bolts—and threw it sixteen meters across the room, hard enough to dent the casing." He pointed to where a charred metal box, about a meter on a side, still lay, surrounded by notations on the floor, near the scorched remains of a trash dumpster. "We're still trying to figure out how it was done."

"Any reason I couldn't move that now?" Goose asked. It took all his self-control to speak diffidently.

Langley snorted. "Yeah, man, it weighs about a hundred fifty kilos and it's bulky and awkward and hard to get a grip on."

"But you're done taking evidence?"

"Sure," the gangly technician answered with a shrug. "Hey, Ridley, if you've got a lifter pack on you—"

Ignoring him, Goose strode across the room and lifted the metal case off the floor with one hand. Like lifting an empty cereal box.

Langley fell silent, staring wide-eyed over his specs.

Goose turned the box over so that the sheared bolts were clearly visible and then set it back down. "Niko, you ready?" he asked quietly, glancing over at her.

She stepped forward to stand by him, lightly touched her badge, and laid both hands on the box. Only Goose was close enough to see her pause for a split second before her skin touched the metal.

Niko closed her eyes, and—

Goose, standing at her elbow, saw her body tense, the steady rise and fall of her chest stop on an inward-drawn breath, and the beat of the artery at her throat flutter weakly.

"Niko!" he grated.

She didn't answer.

"Niko!" "What's wrong?" "Niko?" The room rang with shouts. Zach leaped forward, hand outstretched, but Goose's arm barred his way.

"She's too far in, Captain," he said urgently. "Don't touch her."

"Gooseman, she's in trouble!" Zachary snapped.

"I know." Goose wheeled, touched his badge, and seized Niko's slender hands, the muscles rigid under her cold, pale skin. Gently he raised her hands to his face, the only exposed skin on his body, and closed his eyes.

Concentrate, Gooseman, he told himself. You did this once before, when it was just your own sorry ass on the line.

Niko... he called. Niko!

His biodefenses activated, and a shimmering golden glow raced over his skin, as if hundreds of tiny fireflies swarmed over and around him. He felt oddly electric inside his own skin. 

Niko! he called. Girl, you've got to pull away from it! It's not _your_ death—breathe, live—come on...

No psychic himself, Goose heard nothing of Niko echoing back along their tenuous link. He had only a sense of a vast empty place that reminded him, frighteningly, of the deep ocean where he had once swum alone with only sonar to guide him. _Niko!_

Seconds passed, slowed to a crawl, and fear began to gnaw sickeningly at his vitals. Viciously he shoved it back. Niko! The death's only a memory, an echo. You are here, now, alive, with me in this room...

Darkness, silence.

Niko! Dammit—Niko! Help me! I need your help!

Silence. Silence. Despair and fear churned in his belly.

The darkness answered.

His eyes flew open. Her hands, icy on his face, twitched, and she heaved in a tremendous, gasping breath, eyes opening slowly. He supported her with one solid arm as her knees buckled slightly.

"I'm okay," she gasped, pressing a hand to her face. "Ah—that was careless. Ariel would drag me by one ear to the novices' practice room."

Goose still kept her right hand cupped against his cheek. "You gave us a scare, lady," he chided her gently. He knew that, skin to skin, she could feel him holding rigid to avoid shaking. "You need to sit down?"

"She's going to sit down," Zach said firmly. "In the van. Right now. You can give us your report once you're off your feet, Niko."

Langley, wide-eyed in his holographic field, shook his head. "Ordinary, not," he decided.

Ridley flashed his co-worker an amused glance. "Thanks, Langley," he said quietly. "We'll be back at the station later."

The skinny young man gave a thumbs up. "Right. Later." The holographic field flickered and went out. Ridley scooped up the disc and pocketed it.

Goose kept one arm around Niko's shoulders to support her. "Can you walk okay?" he asked her quietly.

"Goose," she protested, "I'm—" She tried to pull away, and her knees took an alarming dip.

"You're not fine," he said firmly. "You can walk with my help or I can carry you. Take your pick."

Color flooded her cheekbones. She fell silent and let him help her across the floor. He hid a smile.

Quiet? You? What have you done with the real Niko?

"Interesting toy," Goose heard Doc murmuring to Ridley as they all moved slowly out of the ruined basement. 

The rawboned cop had a smile in his voice as he answered, "It comes in handy."

Ridley's comm came to life. "Are you people done down there or what?" Lee's voice demanded. "We got an ID on our girl and I'm gettin' really sick of newsghoul patrol. And what's all the yelling about?"

 

 

Unknown location, Mars City, Mars

0823

 

As with most transmissions piggybacked onto legitimate comm traffic, the picture was slightly grainy.

"Sir, the situation is escalating," the operative began, but the man at the other end cut him off, dark eyes stony.

"I'm aware of the situation. You've let things get out of hand. The Galaxy Rangers should never have become involved."

The operative bowed his head. "Yes, sir. The Rangers have completed their initial investigation of the site and appear to be headed to their hotel to rest. We're continuing surveillance of the apartment as well as combing the city, but there are only four of us left." He hesitated. "Sir... we've intercepted radio chatter among the police. They've put together enough of a description to find her under the ID she's using here and they're staking out her apartment. What are your orders?"

The man stared coldly at him. "My orders haven't changed. Find Gaea. Bring her to me. Failure is not acceptable." Light winked off the breather at his throat as he leaned forward to cut the connection.

"Sir—"

The screen went dark.


	4. Chapter 4

Mars City Meridian Hotel

7/29/2098, 0857

 

"How's she doing, Gooseman?" Zach asked quietly.

"She's resting," the younger man answered in a low voice. "You and Doc get our stuff settled in the other room?"

Zach nodded, staring at his handheld screen. The delicate face of a young woman stared back at him: dark brown hair, pale skin, eyes the dark green of holly leaves. 

From the connecting door Doc's voiced floated through into the suite's work area. "Yeah, my Goose man, and we gave you the rollaway."

"The what?"

"Nicole Galloway," Zach read. "A janitorial worker. Emigrated from Earth two years ago. Her papers say she's twenty, but if she's much older than my son I'll eat Doc's CDU."

"Hey!"

"Nobody home at her apartment, and I don't feel much of a need to stake it out ourselves right now." Zachary checked his chronometer. "Well, I'm up for a shower, right after I call the kids. It's past time we got something to eat, too."

Goose thumbed over his shoulder in the general direction of the street below. "I noticed a noodle shop down the block. Think I'll head down there for some udon. Can I pick up anything for you?"

Zach shook his head. "Doc and I thought we'd get takeout, maybe some curry. Sure you'd rather go by yourself?"

"Got some thinking to do," Goose said with a shrug. "Something about this case just bugs me. I'll be back in a bit."

Zach, a thoughtful look on his face, watched the youngest member of his team stride out the door, and then he picked up the phone.

 

 

Goose settled into a seat at the counter and breathed in the scents of steam, broth, and oil. The slight, young Asian man behind the counter set a heavy cup filled with fragrant tea before him and waited. Goose caught the flash of the man's brown eyes, watching cautiously from under straight, thick lashes.

Goose glanced up at the menu board. "Udon," he said. "With wakame, please. And an order of tsukemono on the side."

The man bowed slightly and stepped into the kitchen.

Sipping his tea, Goose took the chance to glance around him. He was one of a bare handful of customers in the tiny noodle shop, though he'd noticed on his way past that the coffee shop two doors down was bustling with patrons. He'd threaded his way through the rush-hour foot traffic on his way down the block from the hotel, barely noticing the wary glances and averted faces.

He sighed. Hell. This case reeks. A young woman runs out of a burning building unscathed, notices a guy filming her from three stories up, blinds him, and runs off. Before she even leaves the building she rips loose a hundred-fifty-kilo metal box that was bolted to the wall and throws it across the room.

Who the hell else but a Supertrooper can do all these things?

But then _why don't I know her?_

He gritted his teeth, remembering Niko's terse report as Lieutenant Ridley maneuvered his van through the streets to their hotel. Her face, starkly pale against the upholstery, was strained and exhausted, her eyes surrounded by dark smudges.

"The woman was in the basement," Niko said, voice drained of energy and quiet over the purr of the engine. "Three men shot at her—I don't think she saw them coming. She dodged. One of the blasts hit the coolant conduit for the air conditioning unit and started a leak. And then she panicked and pulled the network trunk off the wall. The bolts sheared all the way through. She threw it at them, Zach. She threw it all the way across the room. The sparks from the cables she tore apart ignited the coolant and started the fire."

"Threw it?" Zach asked. "You mean she grabbed hold of it?"

Niko shook her head, letting her eyes close for a moment.

"She's an esper, a very powerful one. She used psychokinesis. Zach, I'm not sure I could do what she did without help from you three. We're dealing with a very dangerous person... and she's afraid. Terribly, terribly afraid."

Goose ran a hand over his eyes as the waiter silently set a plate of pickled vegetables in front of him and refilled his teacup. Absently Goose picked up his chopsticks and took a bite of pickled eggplant. It squeaked faintly between his teeth as he chewed, staring into space.

"I'm not sure I could do what she did... She's afraid," Niko had said.

She's a Supertrooper, she has to be. But why don't I know her?

Memories flashed through his mind.

 

 

"Come on, Doc, I need your help. I'm sick of secrets."

"Are you kidding, Gooseman? They'd shoot both of us."

"They'll never catch me if you help me."

"We never had this conversation, my Goose man."

 

 

But in memory Goose watched again as Doc danced through the networks of BETA Mountain, winnowing out secrets just to know he had them, and Goose, being Goose, himself learned to dance. Not like Doc; never like Doc. But at last, on a night when Zachary was away at Jessie's school, Doc was laughing in the lounge at the Tri-Dee Midnight Movie with three or four other Rangers, and Niko was offplanet on an archaeological dig, Goose slipped on padded feet into a back corridor of BETA Mountain.

The data-entry station he had chosen sat in a seldom-used maintenance locker, and so he made his way there, blending into the shadows. He locked the door, booted up the workstation using a fake ID he'd built with Doc's help, and opened a trouble ticket for a sticky mechanism on a door he had himself kicked out of and back into its track.

From within the maintenance program he opened another session and stole cautiously out onto the network. He worked carefully through the back doors he'd watched Doc using, taking few chances and watching always for security AIs and other users. It took less than two minutes to set up the program he needed in an inactive user directory. His mouth quirked at the corners in a tight, vicious smile: the directory belonged to a minor staffer, on sabbatical for six months, who reported to Senator Wheiner. Goose watched his program execute and open a new back door before wiping itself out of existence, and then he accessed the files he needed and copied them onto the encoded storage chip he carried.

Finished, he removed his chip, closed out the secondary session, routed the trouble ticket, and wiped down the hardware before shutting down and leaving the room. He checked his chrono as he ghosted through the dim corridors. The entire job had taken just over six minutes. He smiled again, baring his teeth in an unconscious snarl.

I'm sick of secrets.

 

 

Doors opened, and a new player danced out onto the network that was BETA. Goose accessed the net from two-bit service providers, net cafés, abandoned accounts at impoverished colleges. Painstakingly he built a randomizer to choose his entry point and reduce the chances that some security AI or bored administrator would notice him.

Slowly, cautiously, Goose gathered bits and pieces of knowledge: names, dates, acquisitions forms. Records of deals that made him want to break things. Reports, correspondence, proposals for projects he prayed no one would ever pursue. Lists of numbers and dates, some with names attached—some, awfully, with names he knew—and some followed only by the cryptic and sickening notations _Nonviable, destroyed_ ; _Unacceptable, culled_ ; _Viable, culled;_ and, perhaps most horrifying, _Undesirable, culled_. And slowly his anger, his pain and disgust grew, until some days it was all he could do to smile and do his job and never betray the rage that ate away at him from inside. Doc noticed, he knew; Goose caught sidelong, worried glances and knew to the hour when Doc spoke to Zach, who was so honest and who could never keep a secret in his life.

Niko noticed, and her pain ate at him too. She tried to talk to him, catching him alone at odd moments, leaving him handwritten notes, faintly fragrant with the delicate scent of her skin—and so, to protect her from his rage and his guilt, to protect himself from her sadness, he began to avoid her whenever they were not on missions. He saw her wounded expression, quickly masked, when he left rooms as she entered them, and tried not to think about it for fear the pain would swallow him. She cornered him once, asking gently, persistently: What was troubling him? Would he not let her help? Was she not his friend?

No, he answered, avoiding her beautiful mild eyes; no, it was nothing, he couldn't talk about it, please let it alone...

But she pressed him. Pressed him and kept pressing, until finally his control snapped and he shouted at her: Leave me _alone_!

It was not until one graceful, slender hand drifted upward to press against her forehead, until he met her gaze at last and saw the shock and distress there, that he realized he had hurt her.

He fled then, to lock himself in his room and stare out the window and pace. Several minutes later his wrist comm began to beep. He ignored it. The high-pitched pinging continued. He gritted his teeth at the noise, which hurt his ears, and glared down at the silver band on his wrist. It kept up its insistent, maddening tone, until at last he growled and swung his arm toward the wall.

The comm went silent with a very satisfactory crunch.

A few minutes later, the comm station began to chime. Goose snarled, vision going hazy with rage. The station proved more resilient than his wrist unit; he had to hit it several times with his fists before he silenced it. He whirled as the red anger crept over him and slammed his right fist into the wall.

It felt right.

Several hours later Commander Walsh came, using his clearance to bypass the door locks, to stand stern-faced over Shane where he sat hunched on the bed in his blood-spattered uniform. The midday heat filtered in through the shattered window.

"Get off your gengineered ass and do your job," Walsh said curtly, turned crisply on one heel, and strode from the room, boots crunching over chunks of glass.

 

 

It was on the flight to Mars that Niko finally trapped him. He sat in the Nav Bay cleaning his pistols, engrossed in the fine play of metals and circuitry, when he heard the door hiss open behind him. The faint scent of Niko drifted to his nostrils. He stiffened, knowing what was coming, dreading it. The door closed behind her, and he heard a soft footfall on the smooth floor.

"Shane, what's wrong? What's eating at you so? Have I done something wrong that you won't even talk to me?" He flinched at the hurt in her voice and refused to meet her eyes as she stepped forward to stand by his elbow.

"Please, Niko," he whispered at last. "I can't tell you." He glanced sharply up at the catch in her breath and heard himself make a muffled, wordless sound at the sight of tears on her cheeks.

"What's hurting you so, Shane?" she asked softly. "You— I— Shane, please let me help." She knelt by his seat, resting one gentle hand on his arm. "I can't keep from hearing you any more. Please let me help you."

His eyes closed at the anguish in her voice. He let the pistol he had been cleaning drop into his lap and opened his eyes to meet hers.

"I'm sorry," he muttered. "I'm sorry. Niko, I'm sorry." Useless goddamn words, they don't fix anything—

Tears welled again in her eyes, spilled onto her cheeks. He raised one gloved hand to wipe them away, eyes fixed on hers—and suddenly her face was cradled in his hands and he was kissing her and hells, hells, nothing in his life had felt so right as the bitter salt of Niko's tears on his tongue and the soft warmth of her mouth on his, the weight and flow of her hair like water over the backs of his hands, the little jump of her body as she stiffened in surprise and then relaxed against him, eager and responsive, and then only the scent and the taste and the heat of her...

A tiny sound escaped her throat and he released her with a gasp, hearing her heart hammering as fast as his, his eyes fixed on hers, both of them equally dazed. What—what did I just do? She stumbled to her feet, graceful Niko who never set a foot wrong, and stared at him from mazed, dilated eyes.

He smelled her suddenly, and the smell did things to him that he had no names for.

"I—have to go," she whispered, and fled.

Shane bowed his head into his hands and sat without moving until Doc came to tell him they were approaching Mars.

 

 

The udon bowl clacked on the counter in front of him. Goose jumped and met the waiter's dark eyes, faintly surprised at the pity he saw there. He cleared his throat.

"Thanks," he said, and picked up his chopsticks again. A passage from a proposal he'd found deep in a secure directory rose into his mind.

_"While the Supertrooper Project is a worthwhile investment of time and resources, I believe that a separate but similar project, one with the objective of producing viable and stable psionic abilities in its subjects, will best serve Earth's needs for future data gathering and covert operations."_

Espionage, blackmail, wetworks... Walsh and Nagata rejected it, but what if— someone else didn't?

Is this why I don't know her?

Niko's voice sounded again in Goose's memory, weary and thin: "She's terribly, terribly afraid."

And Goose remembered how, there in Ridley's van, Zach had looked soberly at her and answered, his voice quiet and very serious, "She's not the only one."


	5. Chapter 5

Mars City Meridian Hotel

7/29/2098, 1518

 

 

The beeping of his wrist comm woke Zach from a light doze. He glanced at the clock and grimaced. Well, at least I got a few hours' rest.

"This is Zachary Foxx."

"Captain, this is Ridley. She just entered the building. Somehow, out of four cops, nobody noticed her until the door was shutting behind her." Zach heard the frustration in Ridley's voice. "We've dispatched a car already to pick you up."

Zachary sat up quickly. "We'll be right there, Lieutenant. Do not approach the suspect."

"Affirmative, Captain. We'll be telling the building manager to keep it cool and stay out of your way. Ridley out."

Doc stuck his head in the door from the main room. "What's the news, Zach?"

"We're heading out." Zach stamped his feet into his boots and stood. From across the suite he heard a soft knocking and then the sound of Niko's door opening. He emerged from the bedroom, smoothing his hair down with one hand, to find Niko and Doc waiting for him. He raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

"Goose is down in the lobby," said Doc. Zach frowned. Why...? But Doc and Niko were watching, so he gestured toward the door.

"Let's go."

 

 

Nicole Galloway lived in a run-down apartment building in one of the outlying, poorer sections of Mars City. Trash blew through the streets past dilapidated cars and squads of scruffy children playing games on the pitted sidewalks. Small markets made bright spots of color among the aging buildings with their dingy, peeling paint.

Zach had had their driver drop them off a block over from Nicole's building. Watchful, the S5s trotted halfway up the block with Goose at the point. Locals melted out of their way until suddenly the street was miraculously clear of people. As he and his team closed the distance to the apartment building's front door, Zach activated his wrist comm again.

"Ridley, this is Foxx. What's the situation?"

Ridley's face appeared in Zach's miniscreen. "Subject's inside, on the northwestern side. Apartment 713, remember? We're standing by."

"Understood. Foxx out." The four of them paused at the corner of the building. Zachary looked around at his team: Doc, watchful yet still smiling slightly; Niko, face calm, ready, Zach knew, for anything; Goose, tense and grim, prepared for conflict.

"Okay, people, we've all seen the layout. One main door and a fire exit, two stairwells, three elevators. She used the main door to enter, but there's no telling which way she'll leave. Doc, you're with me at the main entrance; Niko, you and Goose go in the back. Give her one warning only. Set your weapons on medium stun. Any questions?" Headshakes all around. Zach nodded. "Good. Let's go. And watch your backs."

 

 

Tense and listening, she unlocked the door as silently as she was able. Still, the lock clicked faintly, and she flinched.

She pushed the door slowly open, still listening. Nothing stirred in the dimness. She reached out with her inner senses and found no one. Relaxing, she stepped inside, shut the door and leaned on it, eyes dropping closed in exhaustion.

Only the faint scrape of a bootsole on the rough, cheap carpet saved her.

She dropped into a roll, and the man's first shot crackled over her left shoulder. He didn't get a second. She snatched his gun from his hand with a thought and sent it spinning across the main room of the apartment. Distantly through the intensity of battle she heard it thump against the far wall. Grabbing his right arm, she sank in her thumb, just so, twisted his arm back and up behind him and used the leverage she'd gained to slam his face against the wall in front of him.

"One chance," she said coldly. "Who sent you?" And why didn't I sense you? shrieked some terrified corner of her mind.

"Fuck off, bitch," he said hoarsely. A runnel of blood trickled from his left nostril, smearing the white paint of her wall.

Her lips narrowed in annoyance. Grabbing his hair, she twisted his head so she could look him in the eye. "Who sent you?" she repeated, and her mind took hold of his like a vise. Distantly she noticed it seemed harder than usual. So stop wibbling, fool, and focus, she berated herself.

She saw his pupils dilate in panic as she drilled ruthlessly into his memories. She felt the muscles in his throat and abdomen tensing for a scream and froze those muscles with half a thought.

"Hard to breathe that way," she remarked conversationally, sifting through his mind like a child sorting baubles and hoping her voice didn't sound as scared as she thought it did. "I can tell you're trying not to think of something. Who sent you?"

An image floated up from his memory.

Shocked, she froze. He felt her muscles twitch and tried to squirm free. Almost absentmindedly she put him to sleep with a touch and let him slide bonelessly to the floor.

"No," she whispered to the listening silence of what had been her home for two years. "No, no, no, he's dead. I killed him."

Panic seized her. Oh gods. I have to get out of here. She scrambled to the doorway where she'd let her bag drop, mind ranging, looking for other watchers, and still it seemed weirdly difficult to use a gift she'd had all her remembered life, that usually came easily as breathing. Halfway into the bedroom, she froze again. Police. The police are outside. I have to hurry... Her mind raced as she yanked open drawers to paw through them, pried up the carpet and then a piece of the floor in the back corner of the closet, pulled a picture down from the wall and ripped the backing from the frame. That damned boy with his vidcam. I thought I'd wiped the chip—Careless, you fool... How the hell am I going to get offplanet now?

In less than five minutes she had what she needed stuffed into her shoulder bag. How to leave the building? Not through the front door, the back door's too obvious... It'll have to be the roof. Why aren't they headed up here already?

She paused on her way out, looking down at the unconscious man on her living room floor. "You left those people to burn," she said softly. "You want to take me back to _him_. What kind of person _are_ you?"

Not waiting for a reply, she fled.

 

 

Zach and Doc found, on entering the shabby but relatively clean lobby, that only two of the three elevators were working. "Well, at least it's one fewer that I have to secure," Doc said as he activated his CDU. "Pathfinder, Firefly, get in there and shut these elevators down."

The two sparks of light flew into the control box for the elevators and emerged moments later. "Finito, Doc," chirped Pathfinder. "Those things have seen better days! _I_ wouldn't ride in 'em!"

" _You_ don't have to," Doc reminded his program.

Zach pulled open the door to the stairwell with a grating of hinges. The bottom of the door scraped unpleasantly over the dingy, worn orange carpet.

"Seventh floor," Doc mumbled to himself. "We'll be too tired to fight by the time we get there."

 

 

Goose paused outside the back door, eyes narrowing. "Hey, Niko," he said.

"What is it, Goose?"

"We know she's got telekinesis because you saw her pull that box off the wall."

"Yes. And?"

"She knew somehow that Tulley was watching her. So she's a telepath?"

"I'd assume so."

"Then she'll know we're coming?"

Niko sighed. "Very possibly, yes." What's he— She broke off mid-thought as he pointed upward.

"We missed an escape route."

Niko was already opening a link to Zachary as Goose leapt upward. The fire escape ladder clanged loudly as he tugged it down.

 

 

Doc groaned. "Twelve-story building and now we have to climb to the roof?" he protested between gulps of air. 'Excuse me, Ms. Galloway, we're here to arrest you, but first I have to lie down for a few minutes.'"

"Save it for climbing, Doc," Zachary grunted. They ran past a large numeral 7 painted on the wall. "We're already halfway there."

 

 

Their feet made a din on the metal steps. Niko "pushed" again and used the lift to jump from one landing to the next. Goose, a floor above her, was taking the steps in great, long leaps. "Ninth floor," she called. "You've got a plan, I assume?"

"A what?"

 

 

She swore. "Goddamn lock," she wailed in a whisper. She could feel them moving upward through the building. She closed her eyes and concentrated, a line appearing between her brows.

Push that pin there, this one just so... finally!

The lock popped open in her hand. "Last time I try finesse," she mumbled. "Next time I'll just rip it apart and let them wonder."

_"Never leave a trace of your presence,"_ whispered a voice from her memory.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" she answered through clenched teeth.

She pulled the chain off the door, letting it fall to the landing, and pushed her way through. The door slammed behind her. Turning, she concentrated long enough to jam the bolt into the striker plate. That will slow them down a minute or two—I hope.

 

 

From the landing of the eleventh floor Zach and Doc heard a door slam solidly.

"Shit," Zach swore. Doc stared at his captain's back, amazed, even as he followed him up the last flight.

The door to the roof was shut, the chain that had secured it lying discarded on the landing nearby. Zach bent to pick up the lock.

"She picked it," he noted, and let it fall again. Doc was already trying the handle.

"It's jammed, Captain."

Zach rattled the handle himself. "The bolt's stuck."

"Three guesses who did that."

 

 

She heard the door handle rattle and skittered across the roof like a frightened squirrel. From the side of the building she clearly heard booted feet on the fire escape.

"I've only got one chance," she whispered to herself. She backed up, readying herself to take a running leap across the fifteen-meter gap to the next building. Okay, it's okay. You can do this. Remember the jump you took in Chicago. You can do this.

"Galaxy Ranger! Put your hands on your head and turn around!"

 

 

Goose reached the edge of the roof and saw her. She was backing up as if getting ready to take a running start. His eyes flickered to the gap.

"Shit!" he muttered. "That's gotta be fifteen meters wide!"

Niko had just reached the landing below him. He saw Nicole Galloway tense, psyching herself up, and he drew one of his guns in a flash.

"Galaxy Ranger!" he shouted. "Put your hands on your head and turn around!"

 

Nicole whirled. A tall, blond man in a Ranger's uniform stood at the top of the fire escape at the edge of the roof. She realized suddenly that he was one of the four she had seen on the news. And he had a pistol leveled right at her.

"Hands on your head!"

He was going to fire. She could see it as clearly as if someone had pointed at a picture and said, Here.

She struck.

 

 

From three steps behind him Niko saw Goose reel, dropping his gun. He fell to his knees, already reaching for his badge.

Niko saw Nicole Galloway step back, uncertainty showing on her face. Niko unholstered her shotgun, and the uncertainty faded. She felt a blow against her psychic defenses—even through them, she felt as though her teeth rattled—and felt her gun snatched out of her hand to fall to the fire escape steps two levels down.

Nicole's eyes went wide.

"You—" she began—and behind her the door to the roof blew apart, shattered by Zachary's Thunderbolt. Nicole spun, giving her back to the empty air, a shimmering field appearing around her.

Doc and Zachary, his bionics still fading from visibility, burst out of the doorway, breaking in opposite directions—and then, for Niko, everything seemed to happen at once. Zach stiffened suddenly and fell like a poleaxed bull; Doc fired once, twice, the stunner bolts bouncing off Nicole's shield, and then he too crumpled; Goose's biodefenses finished activating, and he stood.

Niko touched her badge and threw a psibolt, only to see it disintegrate against the other esper's shield. She shook her head.

Goose leapt forward.

Nicole struck at him again—and fear crossed her face as he kept coming. She gasped, and then he was on her and all she could do was dodge.

Stunned, Niko stood at the edge of the roof and watched in awe as Nicole smoothly avoided strike after strike. Niko could sense the immense force of the mental blows raining down upon Goose's mind, but his biodefenses turned them one by one.

Fear twisted the young woman's face; fear, and a slow realization that crept gradually across her features.

The dance went on, Goose punching and kicking, Nicole weaving and sliding under and around and away from his blows, never trying to land a strike with hands or feet. Slowly Goose's defenses began to wear down. And slowly, Niko saw, slowly the field protecting Nicole faded, flickered, thinned.

"Dammit!" she swore furiously. "My gun's two floors down!"

Niko, stepping forward, kicked something, something that clanged on the fire escape's metal bars. She looked down, to where Goose's gun lay at her feet.

The pistol hadn't the heft of her shotgun. She took careful aim, knowing she'd only have one shot.

Nicole dodged another footstrike; struck again, a blow turned by his defenses—but Niko knew he was weakening, and saw that Nicole knew it too as hope crossed the young woman's face for the first time. Nicole struck again and again, hammering at his mental shields with all her strength. That assault took its toll: Niko saw the shield flicker and go out. Niko braced, took a deep breath, steadied herself—

"GOOSE! DUCK!"

He dropped. Nicole whirled to face Niko, and so the stunner bolt caught her square in the chest. She dropped like a bundle of discarded clothing and lay still.


	6. Chapter 6

Mars City Police Department

7/29/2098, 1909

 

 

"What were you doing at the Widner Building?" Zach asked.

Silence.

"Who's the man the police found in your apartment?"

No answer. Nicole Galloway sat, hands cuffed before her and chained to the table, in an interrogation room in the bottom level of the police department. Since coming to inside an armored transport, she had submitted passively, allowing herself to be fingerprinted, photographed, and led to a holding cell. A department paramedic had examined her briefly and then ordered food, which she had eaten quietly and with attention to her table manners. Eyeing the scraped-clean plate, the paramed had ordered a second meal, which Nicole had consumed with equal dispatch. After yelling down the hall for a third tray, the paramed had asked, "How long has it been since you've eaten?" Nicole had raised her eyes to his, face calm, and said nothing.

Now Zach glanced at his chrono. They had been interrogating Nicole for more than three hours, to be met only with the same imperturbable silence.

A knock at the door; one of the guards answered it, and Doc poked his head into the room. "Captain?"

Zach followed Doc into the hallway, leaving the two officers in the room to guard Nicole. Goose and Niko stood outside the two-way mirror, watching the silent young woman.

"Well, like we figured, her papers are faked," announced Doc. He held up his CDU. "Actually, they weren't a bad job. They passed my first sweep, but once I went back and started seriously trying to trace her on Earth, the I.D. fell apart like wet paper after just a couple of queries. But here's what's screwy: There's nothing on this girl."

"Yeah?" Zach raised his eyebrows. "We'd already figured out she had no criminal record—"

Doc shook his head. "No, Zach, I mean there's _nothing_. No birth records, no school, no credit history or driver's license. And here's the really weird part: Immigration and Customs has a record of Nicole Galloway entering Mars territory at the spaceport—but her name doesn't appear on any passenger manifest. _Ever_. And no one answering her description ever traveled on any of the commercial passenger-carrying vessels, or as a properly registered passenger on any private ship."

"Then she must have found someone to smuggle her in." Zach frowned. "Or... could she have stowed away?"

"It's possible," Doc said dubiously. "But that's kind of hard to do, what with most ships carrying security AIs."

"There are ways to do that with telepathy." Niko turned her head to look over at them. "They skirt the edge of what my people consider acceptable, but someone running for her life might not have the same scruples."

"Great," Doc muttered. "A telepath without any morals."

"I doubt she's that bad," Niko said. "She didn't kill the men who shot at her. It's hard to sort out the images I saw, but I think she even tried to get them out before the fire got too bad. There is a difference between hiding yourself with telepathy and, for example, hurting someone."

"Putting semantics aside," Zach cut in, "Doc, you're saying that for all intents and purposes, this girl doesn't exist, and we have no idea where she came from."

"That's about it," Doc answered.

"Great," Goose said. "Who the hell is she?"

Zach ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "Well, it's clear we're not getting anywhere this way. Let's break, get some food and a night's rest, and then try again tomorrow."

"Let her cool her heels in holding overnight," Doc agreed. "Maybe she'll be more inclined to talk."

"Captain, I'm going to stay here, keep an eye on her," Goose said. "She shouldn't be left alone with the guards. Even with the e-locks she'd have to get through, I don't trust that she wouldn't be able to escape from here."

Zach hesitated.

"Come on, Zach, it's not like I haven't pulled all-nighter guard duty before. If you'll wait a couple minutes I'll grab something to eat and come back."

"Okay, I'll admit it's a good idea. You sure you don't want backup?"

"Captain, no offense, but she took out you and Doc with one try, and Niko—"

"Goose, I'm fine. I'm perfectly capable of standing guard," Niko said stiffly.

He looked evenly at her. "You look tired," he said quietly. "Get some rest. You can always get up and come relieve me early tomorrow morning."

Niko opened her mouth to protest, but Zach gently cut her off. "Niko, why don't you plan on doing that? Go get some sleep. Goose will probably be glad to have a break come five in the morning. I'd rather have one alert and well-rested Ranger here than two tired ones."

Niko frowned. "All right, all right. Let's go get some food, then."

"If you're gonna leave right now, somebody please bring me food, will you?" reminded Goose. "I'm hungry."

"When aren't you, my Goose man?"

 

 

 

MCPD Holding Block 2

7/30/2098, 0326

 

 

Goose leaned against the wall and counted the specks in the tile. In the wee hours of the morning, he decided, the best descriptor for Holding Block 2 of the Mars City Police Department was "dead boring." 

Goose glanced into Nicole Galloway's cell, where she still lay on her back and stared at the ceiling.

Wonder if she's counting specks, too?

Nearby a two-man janitorial crew busied themselves with a floor-polishing machine, the most interesting thing that had happened all night. Goose caught himself watching in fascination and nearly laughed. One of the workers, a short, wiry man with sandy blond hair, looked up and caught his eye.

"Evening, Ranger," the man said amiably with a polite smile. "Or maybe I should say morning."

His coworker, a tall, lithely muscular man with brown hair, glanced around from the circuits he was adjusting and scowled at the blond man. "Quit slacking," the darker man grumbled. "Bad enough the stupid 'bot's down and we have to do this, now you're gonna leave it to me?"

The polishing machine started up again with a whine of moving parts. Goose winced at the noise. With a nod, the blond man turned back to work, and the two began guiding the polisher slowly across the floor.

Goose stretched and decided on another cup of the vile stuff the vending machine company dared to call coffee.

"I'm going for coffee," he called to Private Warren, the officer at the guard station down the hall. Warren waved without looking up from his monitors. 

The sound of the floor polisher faded a bit as Goose turned the corner into the tiny break room. He fed in his credit chip and watched the acrid-smelling liquid stream into his cup. Wonder how old this thing is? I thought Doc said once that all the vending machine companies went over to using fresh-ground coffee way back at the turn of the century. He stretched again and wondered when Niko might be showing up, and if she would be cross with him when she did.

The holding area seemed very quiet suddenly, and he frowned as he picked up his cup. It took him a moment to put his finger on the reason: the cleaning crew's equipment had gone silent. Guess they finished, he thought idly. He walked out of the vending area and saw that their polishing machine still stood in the hallway—

His steps quickened. In the hallway near Nicole's cell.

Where's Warren?

Dropping the coffee, he broke into a run.

 

 

Goose burst out of the fire door at the rear of the station and into the loading dock. The stink of trash assailed his nose. He ignored it.

The two men were bundling Nicole's unconscious body into the trunk of a nondescript grey car wedged into the end of the alley connecting to the loading area. Both men still wore the grey coveralls of the cleaning crew they had appeared to be. A third person sat at the wheel of the car, face concealed by the headrest, and Goose caught a glimpse of a fourth person in the back seat. An empty trashbin, its lid still open, rolled in a lazy arc away from the car, the rumble of its wheels on the worn permacrete nearly drowning out the low idle of the engine.

As Goose pelted down the alley toward them, the blond man cursed and let go of Nicole's legs to reach for a concealed holster. Goose heard the car's engine rev. The second man hastily lowered the limp form to the ground.

Goose was nearly on them when the blond man fired. Goose touched his badge and let the blaster bolt glance harmlessly off skin suddenly gone silver.

Goose's right fist plowed into the shooter's jaw, snapping the man's head back and sending him into the car's left rear fender with a dull crunch of bones. The brown-haired man straightened and took a step back, face blanching, as his partner dropped to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs. Goose lifted the brown-haired man effortlessly off his feet by the front of his shirt and let his biodefenses subside.

"Who are you?" he snarled into the man's face.

"You don't need to know, Ranger," cut in another voice. Goose's head snapped around.

The driver, imposing and black-haired, stood next to the fallen man, the muzzle of the microwave laser minipistol in his right hand aimed squarely at Nicole's head. He was tall, with a narrow, intelligent face, and wore a dark suit of expensive cut.

"You can let go of him now, and we'll be on our way," he continued, his cold grey eyes boring into Goose's.

Goose stared at him. "You won't shoot her," he said, hoping his voice sounded more confident than he felt.

The driver looked at him dispassionately, his hand never wavering, and waited.

Goose let the man he held drop to the ground. The driver gestured with his head, and then he and Goose stood unmoving as the brown-haired man gathered up his partner, set him down in the back seat of the car, shut the door and slammed the trunk before climbing into the driver's seat.

Goose glared. "I'm gonna remember your face, mister," he snapped.

The other man shrugged, indifferent. "You do that, Ranger Gooseman," he replied. He began to crouch as if to pick up Nicole.

"Don't try it," Goose said quietly.

The driver's eyebrows rose.

"You blew it. Leave now. The alarm's gone up; you don't have much time. And if you hurt her, I'll kill you. Get out of here."

The man stood slowly, never looking away from Goose. With dignity he inclined his head, and then he backed toward the car, gun still trained on Nicole. The brown-haired man popped open the passenger door. With a graceful leap, the dark man was into the car; he was still pulling the door shut as it pulled away with a tortured whine of its repulsorlifts.

Goose turned toward Nicole.

Still curled on the mottled pavement, she was watching him, face perplexed.

"Why?" she asked softly.

He blinked. "Huh?"

"Why would you kill him?"

Goose grinned savagely. "He pissed me off." He squatted next to her and offered his hand. Her expression grew wary. Goose sighed.

"Nicole... but that's not your name, is it?"

She rolled to her feet in one swift motion. He stood much more slowly, hand still outstretched, for she stood poised, ready to bolt. He took a deep, slow breath.

"I can tell," he said carefully, "that you're different. Like me. I'd like to help you, Nicole."

Her eyes shifted away from his. "Why?" she asked again, her gaze fixed on the ground. "I'm your prisoner. Aren't you supposed to take me back to jail?"

"Sometimes I don't do the things I'm supposed to," he said dryly. "Ask my boss sometime, if you ever get the chance." She tensed, and he raised his hands, palms out in appeal. "I didn't mean—I don't—Ahhh, shit. How did I get into this situation? Niko's the diplomatic one."

She laughed, a short sound, as if he had surprised the laugh out of her.

"Look... Nicole? My name is Shane. I want to help you, because I think... we're alike."

Her head jerked back and she stared at him, eyes wild—and turned to bolt.

"Wait! Please," he pleaded, and as if something were dragging at her she turned back toward him. "I just want to help you. I know you're afraid. I know those men came to Mars to find you. Can you tell me who they are and why they're chasing you?"

"Why can't you just leave me alone!" she shouted, her voice almost shrill. "I just want to live by myself, have a life of my—" She choked off her words, her eyes filling with tears, and visibly fought for control. "Why do you think we're alike?" she quavered. "I've never seen you before."

"You know I'm different," he answered. "When we fought on that rooftop, neither of us could touch the other."

She nodded and sniffled.

"I'm a Supertrooper, a genetically enhanced soldier. I was made to defend the Earth," he explained. "There are others like me. I think you're one of us, or someone like us."

The tears welled up again. "Defend?" she asked, and the bitterness in her voice startled him. "I don't think I was supposed to be for anything so nice. But I ran—" She looked away. "I don't know why I'm telling you this." She wrapped her arms around herself and tightened her lips.

He studied her. "This is way beyond me," he said. "Nicole, we need more information if we're ever gonna figure out what's going on or who those men were." She began shaking her head. "I need to talk to my teammates," he protested.

"Your Captain Foxx will arrest me," she answered flatly.

"If I ask him to wait for a few hours, I think he will," Goose said. "Will you trust me for a few hours?"

She looked sidelong at him, those holly-green eyes probing.

Goose felt an odd sensation behind his eyes, like the touch of a hand. He flinched and sighed. "Okay, okay," he said, and, conscious that he might well be doing a very stupid thing, he dropped his defenses.

Goose let his eyes close, for looking through them was suddenly disconcerting, as if he had acquired a second pair without the ability to choose which ones he saw through. He felt as though he had stepped into a lake, as though water, both warm and cool at once, ran over his skin and his mind in ripples and eddies, gently flowing over him, touching, filtering delicately into the secret places of his heart and leaving behind a feeling of having been changed in some precious and ineffable way. 

And as the lake touched him, he felt the heart of the lake.

She should be free, he thought sadly. That's not the heart of someone made to be a soldier. She feels too much, cares too openly, to become a weapon like me.

He heard Nicole sigh and opened his eyes. She scrubbed angrily at her tearstained face, avoiding his gaze.

"You had people like you," she said stiffly.

"Yeah," he said. "It's hard to be alone." Like I was, some small corner of himself whispered. Even among all of the others, I was always alone.

She didn't answer. He didn't know if she'd even heard.

"Nicole—no, I can't keep calling you that. Will you tell me your name?" he asked softly, as he might have spoken to a wild and skittish colt.

She was silent for a long moment.

"Gaea. My name is Gaea."


	7. Chapter 7

The Blue Moon Café, Mars City

7/30/2098, 0357

 

 

"Zach, this is Goose. Please hit your scrambler." Goose suited action to words, pressing the tiny key on his wrist comm that secured his signal from snoopers. The image on his screen broke down into garbage, then resolved as Zachary activated the decoding capability on his own comm unit. Goose braced himself at the look on Zach's face.

"Gooseman, where the hell are you? We're at the PD, they've got an officer down, Nicole Galloway is missing and so is the man they found in her apartment, and _where the hell are you_?"

Goose winced. He'd expected Zach to be annoyed, but the volume, even over the minispeakers in his comm, was still dismaying. "The situation's under control, Captain," he said, gritting his teeth and waiting for the explosion. Gaea, perched across from him, shifted uneasily in her seat and fidgeted with her fork. The worn upholstery squeaked faintly under her weight. Across the café, a seedy-looking couple hastily paid their bill and scurried out the door.

Fastest job I've ever done of clearing out a restaurant, Goose thought, amused. So what's so scary about one Galaxy Ranger and one cute girl in a prison jumpsuit, anyway?

Instead of exploding Zachary paused for a moment that stretched out a little too long for Goose's liking. He watched his Captain's eyebrows lower and sighed inwardly.

"Gooseman," Zach said in a too-careful tone, "you will report your whereabouts and those of Nicole Galloway if known to you. You will account for your activities since 0328 this morning. _Now_ , mister!"

"Captain, I'm willing and able to give my report, but it needs to be done in person," Goose said quietly. "I'm at the Blue Moon Café on Parker Street."

Zach paused again, staring at Goose.

"Can you come here, Captain? Please?" Goose asked, tone respectful but eyes boring into Zach's, willing him to understand. "I think everything will be much clearer if you do."

Zachary began to speak, but on his comm screen Goose saw a slender hand laid on his shoulder, and Zach stopped.

"Zachary," Goose heard Niko say, "I think we ought to go."

Goose closed his eyes momentarily. How did I rate her as a teammate?

Zach blew out his breath in frustration. "All right," he said curtly. "Don't go anywhere." The screen went blank as he signed off.

Goose looked across the booth at Gaea and shrugged.

"Hungry?"

 

 

Goose was watching Gaea stare into the amber depths of a cup of tea when the door swung open to admit his three teammates. A waitress popped her head out of the kitchen and then pulled back again at Niko's smile and headshake. The lone remaining customer took one look at the new arrivals and rose hastily, tossing money onto the table next to his half-finished meal and scooting quickly out the door. Goose saw Gaea's body stiffen and lightly touched his fingertips to the table before her.

"Remember," he said gently, "I want to help you."

The skin of her throat jumped as she swallowed, watching Zachary approach as though her doom were overtaking her.

Zach strode toward them, Niko and Doc trailing behind him, and checked his stride involuntarily for a moment when he caught sight of Gaea sitting opposite Goose.

Goose caught Niko's eyes and quirked one corner of his lips in the hint of a smile. She returned it uncertainly.

Zach parked himself in front of the table and stared forbiddingly down at Goose. "Report, Gooseman," he ordered, eyebrows lowered in a fierce frown. Niko bent a mild blue-green gaze on Gaea, who steadfastly kept her attention on her cup, while Doc leaned with exaggerated nonchalance against the end of the booth next to Goose and let his attention wander over the timeworn furniture and moth-eaten carpet.

"Nice place, my Goose man," Doc put in.

Niko snagged a chair from a nearby table and settled herself at the table near Zach. Goose noted with a flash of gratitude that she left Gaea's side of the booth completely unblocked.

Goose looked up at his captain and gestured to the seat at his right. Zach sat, face still grim and eyes never leaving his youngest team member.

"Captain, I'd like to introduce Gaea. Gaea, this is Zachary Foxx. He's been in the Rangers a long time. Has two kids and isn't nearly as much of a hardass as he'd like you to think."

Zachary turned beet red. From the corner of his eye Goose watched Niko, with obvious effort, not laugh.

Doc lost it.

"Gooseman!" barked Zach. " _Report!_ "

Goose straightened involuntarily, took a breath, and ordered his thoughts.

"Captain, at approximately 0328 this morning I stepped into the break room for a cup of coffee, leaving Private Warren on watch at the guard station..."

 

 

"And he knew you by name?" Zach asked for the third time.

"Yes."

Both men turned in surprise to Gaea. She finally raised her eyes from their study of her cup to meet Zachary's gaze squarely for the first time.

Goose, next to him on the seat, felt Zach stiffen in shock at the intensity of that leaf-green stare.

"I don't know who those men are, Captain Foxx," she said. "But I know who they work for." Her voice trembled perceptibly. "At least I—I know _who_ he is. What he is. I don't know his real name." Her attention dropped to the cup again. "I always had to call him sir."

Goose sat stock-still. Niko darted a sidelong glance at him, eyes narrowing, and then spoke in a gentle voice. "Could you identify him if you saw a picture?"

Gaea looked up at her, face tired, and whispered, "Yes." She seemed very small suddenly, all her defenses lowered. Goose was struck anew by how young she looked. He caught the flash of Niko's eyes as she glanced obliquely at him once more.

Doc poked Zachary. "Hey, Captain, can I sit down here? I think the doctor needs to operate."

"Here?!" Zach said in disbelief.

"Hey, it's not like we could miss anyone spying on us," Doc pointed out, "and we already chased out their only customer."

"And they got to Gaea in Holding at the police station," Goose cut in. "You still willing to bet that the building's secure? At least we chose this place at random."

"Here, if it'll make you feel better, Captain," Doc said, rummaging in his pockets. "I picked up this little gizmo at a trade show. Primitive privacy screen. It'll keep casual eavesdroppers from overhearing us." He set the little square unit on the table and pressed three buttons. A faint buzz tickled up and down Goose's earbones and faded.

Zach threw up his hands in surrender and let Doc take his place at the table. Doc took his CDU off his belt and hit his badge. "Okay, guys," Doc said, "time to do our stuff. Open a connection to BETA via the MCPD's local net. Standard encryption setup."

Goose saw Gaea's eyes widen as the two programs flickered and danced in their holographic field. On the CDU's miniscreen data flowed: prompts, challenges, status messages. Zach's fingers drummed on the seat back, and Doc gave the captain a wry look from under his eyebrows. Gaea fidgeted with her fork again and then dropped it as Zach glanced at her. Goose sighed inwardly.

Many seconds later, Pathfinder's voice emerged from the CDU. "Okay, Doc, we're in."

"Okay," Doc said, looking at Gaea and at Goose in turn. "What are we looking for?"

Gaea sat as if frozen, obviously torn, and Goose winced in sympathy.

"Geneticists," he said quietly. "Right, Gaea?"

The girl seemed to shrink in on herself, as if in a vain attempt to hide. To his vast discomfort, Goose found himself suddenly the center of attention. He raised his hands defensively. "Hey, it's not that wild a guess."

"But, Shane," Niko protested. "How do we know Gaea isn't a natural telepath? We do exist, you know," she added dryly. Doc choked back a snort.

"How many natural telepaths also have telekinesis and can manipulate energy?" Goose countered. "Gaea did something to that vidcam, which has no mind that a telepath could affect."

"Such people do exist," Niko argued. "I've seen some of the Adepts on my homeworld do such things. Those abilities can occur naturally."

"What about the men chasing her?" Goose demanded.

Zachary spoke for the first time. "There are some ugly chapters in Earth's history where telepaths are concerned," he said quietly. "I don't like to think that there are still people like that out there, but you have to admit it's possible."

Doc fidgeted. "Um, Zach... I know you hate it when I tell you this stuff, but—"

Zachary groaned and put his head in his hands.

"I think our Goose man is on the right track, I'm just having trouble putting my finger on why." Doc tapped idly at his CDU, staring into the holographic field. "I'm sure I saw something about a project that sounds like this..."

"That's what happens when you break into too many databases, Doc," Niko teased him. "You start forgetting where you saw things."

Zach sat still, mumbling under his breath. Goose's enhanced hearing clearly caught the phrase "More gray hairs than my kids give me," and he found himself hard pressed to keep a straight face. 

"What's the harm in looking, Zach?" Goose asked. "If I'm wrong, we've done a search on the wrong thing. No saying we can't just change tactics and move on, right? Just as long as Doc here makes sure nobody's paying attention to the stuff we search on, no one ever even needs to know that we looked."

Zach finally raised his head again, a resigned look on his face. "Fine, Gooseman," he said wearily. "If this is what it takes to disprove this wild idea of yours."

Doc flexed his fingers with a cracking of knuckles. "Okay, " he said. "Geneticists. Pathfinder, Tripwire, let's go tiptoe through BETA's tulips."

"Hacking again, Doc?" Pathfinder squeaked. "Naughty, naughty."

Doc moved to press a key on the CDU and then stopped, eyes suddenly intent on Goose's. "Uh... are we including geneticists from the Supertrooper project?" he asked, his voice exactly as offhand as it should be.

Doc, I owe you one.

"Sure," Goose answered, praying his voice sounded as cool as he thought it did. "We know they're qualified to design someone like Gaea here."

Doc turned back to his work. Goose watched Gaea watching in fascination as Doc's programs sent data flickering across the CDU's screen faster than the eye could follow. She glanced warily over at Goose.

"We're an unusual bunch," he said dryly. Her lips twitched.

An image appeared on the screen; Goose winced as he recognized Max's face. He glanced at Gaea, who shook her head.

"I don't know him."

Goose realized he was holding his breath and let it out. Niko gave him a sympathetic look.

"Next!" Doc said. Another face appeared, and again Gaea answered in the negative. Goose counted to himself: three faces, some familiar, some not; then five, and then he saw Gaea flinch as the image of a dark-haired woman he didn't know resolved on the screen. They all watched as tears welled up in her eyes.

"Mira Halleran," Doc read. "Level-two geneticist, biologist. Left the Supertrooper Project in 2079—"

"That's the year I was decanted," Goose said. "No wonder I don't recognize her. Where'd she go?"

Doc scanned the file. "Took a job at New Horizons Labs designing custom livestock, a step down if ever I heard of one. Went on—" His eyes jerked to Gaea and back to the screen. "Er, maternity leave late 2080, submitted her resignation in 2081, about six months later. Not much about the child here. K—" Doc broke off and looked at Gaea as she reached pale fingers to touch the face on the screen.

"Killed August 3, 2086, in a car wreck, when the main bolt on her seat restraint failed and she went headfirst through the windshield," Gaea finished in a muted voice. "The child, a five-year-old daughter, died a few days later of complications from internal injuries. Except as you can see," she scrubbed at her eyes, "I'm quite healthy."

The table was silent a moment.

"She raised you?" Niko asked gently. Gaea nodded, still staring at the CDU screen. The auburn-haired telepath touched the younger woman's hand lightly. "I'm sorry," Niko said. Gaea blinked at her.

"It was a long time ago," Gaea said dully. She stared a while longer at the screen before her eyes went to Goose's.

"It wasn't an accident," she said. He stared at her.

" _He_ arranged it," Gaea said, nearly spitting out the words. "Ma— Mira was in his way, so he got rid of her."

"How do you know?" Zachary cut in, only to find himself pinned by that unnerving stare.

"I found out by chance," she answered. "He made me practice all the time. He never told me why. I just had to. It was one of his rules. He had rules for everything. Never leave a trace of your presence. Never tell anyone your real name. Never reveal that you're different." For a moment Goose thought he heard the ghost of a deep, harsh voice behind hers.

Goose flinched. Way too close to home...

"So I was practicing and I accidentally touched his mind. I wasn't ever allowed to. And he was reviewing my progress, he was angry because Mira hadn't done what she was supposed to and I was behind in developing and he was thinking about changing my meds and in my mind I saw—" her voice choked. "I saw him standing over her body and I _knew_..." She heaved a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut. "I got... angry. I was only seven. I thought he was dead and I ran."

Rage ran like acid through Goose's blood. His hands where they lay on the table clenched slowly into fists.

Doc stared at his screen, but Goose saw the clenched muscles of his jaw standing out like cords, and his brown eyes were cold. "Pathfinder, run a check on anyone known to associate with Mira Halleran," Doc said. "Don't know if it'll turn anything up, but..." He shrugged.

Another face appeared on the screen, and Gaea shook her head.

"This is interesting," Doc said slowly, scanning over the file. "Stuart Chapman, Level-two geneticist. Left the project about a year before Mira Halleran did, went on to a part-time teaching gig. Died February 22, 2083 of a drug overdose after losing his job. Pathfinder, figure out if any of the other Supertrooper scientists have died, excluding verified illnesses with known causes. You—" he gave Goose an apologetic glance. "You can exclude Max Sawyer."

In just under a minute, the program's piping voice sounded again from the CDU. "Nope, Doc, those two are it." Doc lifted his head from his perusal of the file to exchange a look with Niko. "Seems kinda coincidental, doesn't it?" he asked rhetorically. She frowned.

"Hey, Doc, do disappearances count?" Pathfinder squeaked.

Doc stared down at the screen, where a man's face was taking shape. "Gr—" he began. A sound from Gaea—half gasp, half cry—interrupted him. 

"That's him," she whispered, eyes dilated and full of fear. "But he's dead. I killed him. He's dead—" Her voice roughened, and she broke off.

Doc tore his attention from the girl's face and returned to scanning though the file.

"Greer Latham," he read. "Level-one geneticist, neurophysiologist, psychologist. A major player on the Supertrooper Project. Left the project June 20, 2085, and took an extended vacation before just dropping off the face of the earth. There's a note here: Whereabouts classified. Looks like our man here was into some pretty high-level stuff. And this is an old picture, taken nearly twenty years ago."

Goose held perfectly still, fighting to keep his emotions in check. It fits. That damn report was _his_. Gaea was _his_ idea. And someone took him up on it, someone who could keep the whole thing so secret that BETA doesn't even know about it.

Niko, he could see, was following a similar train of thought. "But Doc, the World Federation abandoned and outlawed that line of experimentation after the Wolf Den riot. And all of the Supertrooper records were consolidated under BETA's management."

"Unless—" Goose said, choosing his words very carefully, "unless Gaea didn't come from the Supertrooper Project at all. We've only found three people who fall into this weird pattern of deaths and disappearances. Maybe they're it, a sort of splinter group."

"You can't design somebody as complex as Gaea with just three people," Doc protested. Niko began nodding slowly.

"But if those three people had access to all of the data and research done for the Supertrooper Project..." she guessed. "They all left fairly late in the project, after the design phase must have been done or nearly done. Is that right, Shane?"

Goose fought the impulse to squirm in his seat. "I can't be sure, Niko," he answered. "I wasn't exactly in on that stuff."

Doc hunched over his CDU and began muttering unintelligibly. Pathfinder and Searchlight obliged by filling the screen with data. "Report," he mumbled to himself. "Proposal. Hmmm... Yeah! Success!" With a flourish he pointed to the screen.

"About five years before our Goose man here was decanted, Greer Latham proposed an alternate line of research into building soldiers with psionic abilities for—" Doc twitched his mouth in disgust "—'data gathering and covert operations,' meaning of course all the stuff nobody's government wants to admit it even thinks about."

"You can't possibly suggest that Commander Walsh would have anything to do—" Zachary began in an outraged tone.

Doc made placating motions. "No way, Captain, of course not—actually, there's a notation here the commander turned it down. But it sure looks like _somebody_ went through with it, somebody with the power and resources to keep their work totally secret. And it looks like they found you here on Mars," he said to Gaea, "and they want to bring you back under their control."

" _He_ does," she whispered. "I saw his face in that man's memories. He's still alive, and he wants me back."

Goose slammed his fists down on the table, setting Gaea's cup jouncing in its saucer and nearly upsetting his soda glass. "No. No way," he said flatly. Damn science geeks, playing God. If she doesn't have the heart to be a soldier, she sure as hell doesn't have it in her to be an assassin!

"Gooseman," Zach said sharply, "Our job is to enforce the law. We were sent to—"

"We were sent," Niko interrupted in a mild but firm voice, "to investigate the cause of the fire at the Widner Building."

"But people died in that fire!" Zachary protested.

"Was that Gaea's fault?" Niko returned. "She—"

"Yes."

They all stared at Gaea.

"It was my fault," she said quietly. "I know it was an accident, but I'm still the one who caused the fire. I grabbed the network trunk because it was close by. I didn't even look to see what I was grabbing. I'm the reason the fire control AI couldn't do its job. But I'm telling you all—" and her glance swept over the four Rangers, "that if you try to take me back to Earth where he, where Latham can just come and get me whenever he feels like it, I'll fight you. I won't go back. I won't."

That might have sounded more convincing, Goose thought, if her voice weren't shaking.

The group around the table erupted in argument.

"Captain, we can't!" protested Goose. "It's no better than slaverunning—"

"We could—" started Doc.

"No!" Zachary barked, his brows drawn down fiercely. "Absolutely not. We're taking her in."

" _Captain_ ," Goose said urgently as Gaea went tense.

"No. You're not arguing with me, Gooseman. Gaea, we can protect you—"

"No, you can't," she answered flatly, her gaze still fixed intently on his face and her body poised for flight.

"She's got no ID, Captain," Doc wheedled. "She doesn't officially exist. We could just—"

"That's exactly why we have to take her in. These people are operating in secrecy. If we let you go, Gaea, we're only helping them. I don't like taking you anywhere against your will—but I don't like where this investigation is taking us, either, and it's time to take it to the commander."

Zach fixed his eyes on Goose. "You know I'm right, Goose," Zach continued in a gentler voice. "No one from BETA is going to give Gaea up without a fight."

Goose looked away, emotions warring in his mind. Is he right? They found her once. Could we hide her well enough? How do I know they wouldn't just grab her the minute she left my sight? But if she went with us... she herself is the only evidence we've got.

Will anyone else besides the four of us remember she's not just evidence?

"No," Gaea repeated. "I won't go to Earth." Goose heard the edge of panic creeping into her voice and flinched.

He stood. "Gaea, will you come for a walk around the block with me? Please?"

"Gooseman—"

"No, Zach," Niko cut in softly. "Let them go."

Gaea wavered, uncertain.

"I'd like to talk. Please?"

She stood slowly. As she stepped away from the table, Doc grinned and winked up at her. "Just remember, Gaea, you can kick our butts all over town anytime, if you really want to."

Gaea smiled—a forced, frightened smile. Goose touched her shoulder gently, and together they turned and walked toward the door.

 

 

They strolled down the sidewalk in silence briefly before Goose spoke.

"Look, I won't lie. I'm worried. Hell, I'm damn nervous. But the captain's talking sense. Maybe the answer is to blow it all wide open. But—"

"You knew his name."

He checked his stride and turned to face her, for she had stopped to look accusingly at him. He sighed.

"I suspected. Look, I—"

"I know. You snooped."

He blinked at her. She shrugged awkwardly and looked away for a moment.

"You're kind of noisy... and I guess my manners aren't very good. I spent too much time using it to stay alive to care about listening to people. Why were you snooping?"

This time it was Goose who looked away. "I was just tired of secrets."

"Was it worth it?"

He turned his gaze back to hers. "Yeah. Yeah, it was. Even though the things I've learned make me sick sometimes. And angry."

She started walking again. "So if you know something about... Latham then you know I won't be safe on Earth."

"We'll protect you."

"You can't. When I was little he used to talk to men sometimes. I wasn't ever allowed to see them, but once I heard one of them talking, I listened to his thoughts as he talked, and that one called another one 'General.' I told you my manners aren't very good. I was snooping. I was only five or six. The others shut that one up, but—can your commander protect me from a general?"

Goose winced. "I don't know," he admitted. "But I—I can promise you this: _I_ will protect you." He stopped once more and very gently laid his right hand on her shoulder. "I swear it. I'm not free, and I don't know if I'll ever be free. But maybe you can be. I want to help you. When this is all behind us I... want to know you're out there somewhere living the life you want to live. So I promise, I'll protect you with everything I've got. Will you trust me?"

Her eyes, looking nearly black in the early-morning darkness, sparked a startling green-gold in the halo of a streetlight as she raised them to study his.

"I trust you... Shane," she said softly.

It sounded like a prayer.


	8. Chapter 8

On board _Ranger One_ , Mars City Spaceport

7/30/2098, 0649 BETA Mountain time

 

 

Gaea stepped hesitantly aboard _Ranger One_ under Goose's watchful eye. Zach and Niko had already boarded to prep the ship for launch. Doc stood at the hatch, smiling gently.

"Welcome aboard _Ranger One_ , Gaea," he said. "This is GV. He's our onboard AI." He indicated a dataport station in the airlock. The AI's blue and green eyeball icon bobbed in acknowledgement. "GV, this is Gaea. She's sort of a VIP, so take good care of her, all right?"

"How do you do, ma'am?" GV greeted her in his cheerful way. "I look forward to serving you."

Gaea blinked. "Thanks," she mumbled, looking at the deck. "Um—nice to meet you."

Goose touched her elbow, touched by her shyness. "I can show you a place to stow your bag."

"Okay," she answered softly, and Doc's voice floated after them as Goose led her out of the airlock and into a long corridor. "Okay, GV, final prelaunch—" The sound of the familiar ritual faded as they headed aft.

Gaea followed Goose down the corridor to a hatch, which opened into a long compartment with four seats. "Nav Bay," he told her, tipping his head toward the port. She stepped through the hatch, gaze fixed on the rocky Martian landscape.

"Never been outside the dust shields before?" he asked, guessing at the reason for her fascination.

She tore her attention away from the bright vista and looked at him, shaking her head. "It's expensive. I never had the money."

Niko's image blinked onto the screen in front of the forward set of chairs. "Goose, we're ready for takeoff. Are you secure back there?"

"One minute, please, Niko."

"All right, Goose. Countdown starting." The screen went dark.

Goose opened a cargo bin and gestured for Gaea to stow her bag inside. She set it down hesitantly. He shut the bin and showed her how the latch worked.

"You can get it out any time you want as long as we're not taking off or landing, but just remember it's better not to have unsecured stuff lying around on board. We need to strap in now." He gestured toward the forward pair of the four seats. "Take your pick."

She hesitated again, glanced at him and the stations, and then chose the left-hand seat and busied herself with straps and buckles. Goose settled into the station at her right and strapped in with the automatic ease of long practice. He glanced over and saw that she'd fastened the buckles and was fidgeting with the straps. At his look she hastily dropped her hands into her lap and folded them neatly. Sitting very still, she draw a slow breath that quivered audibly. He looked more sharply at her, concern rising again.

"You okay?"

She nodded, refusing to meet his eyes. He searched her face for a moment, but unlike her nervous hands her controlled features offered no hint of her state of mind. Niko's image appeared on the screen again.

"Twenty seconds."

"We're ready, Niko," Goose said. "We sent out the report to Captain Dansky yet?"

Niko's lips twitched as she held back a smile. "Zach just got off the comm with him. I don't think he was satisfied with our explanation, but he agreed to wait for the rest of the information until after we're back at BETA."

Goose caught Niko's glance over at Gaea and noted from the corner of his eye that the girl kept her eyes glued to her lap.

The hatch slid open and Doc stepped through, quickly seated himself behind Gaea, and strapped in.

"Five seconds," Zach's voice came from offscreen. "Doc, you in Nav?"

"Ay-firmative, Captain," came the cheerful answer.

Onscreen, Niko touched a switch. "Mars City Spaceport, we are go for takeoff in three, two, one—"

Liftoff was smooth. Goose reached out and touched the data station keypad, thinking Gaea would enjoy watching the forward view of their ascent, and suddenly the screen switched from Niko's face to a view of the Martian sky, spread above them like vibrant cloth. He smiled gently at her rapt expression as _Ranger One_ flung itself away from the surface of the planet.

Out of the frying pan... Goose sighed, feeling some of the tension draining out of him, and Gaea turned her head curiously. He returned her glance and quirked up one corner of his mouth.

"That much closer to getting you out of this mess," he said quietly.

To his dismay, Gaea's eyes filled suddenly with tears. She blinked furiously, stared down at her lap and shivered. A teardrop plopped softly into her lap, followed closely by another. _Shit_.

They cleared Mars' atmosphere, and a moment later Goose said quietly over his shoulder, "Doc, would you excuse us?"

Doc paused briefly, looking a little startled, before answering easily, "Sure, my Goose man. No problem." His seat belt clicked, and his gaze, sympathetic and a little sad, rested on Gaea's bowed head as he rose. Goose caught Gaea looking obliquely toward Doc before he stepped through the hatch and it closed behind him. The ship accelerated away from Mars' gravity well, heading for their assigned warp point.

Goose laid a hand on her arm and felt her shivering. "Gaea," he said gently, "what's wrong?"

"I'm scared," she admitted in a small voice.

"I don't blame you. I'd be afraid too. You've been on your own a long time, haven't you?"

"I—"

The hatch hissed open again. Niko stood framed there, hesitant. They both looked up at her, and Gaea hurriedly scrubbed at her face.

"Gaea, I'd like to talk with you," Niko said softly. "You can have Goose here or not, as you like." She stepped into the Nav Bay, and the door hissed shut behind her.

Gaea sniffled and drew a couple of deep breaths to steady her voice. "What about?"

"As you've already discovered, I have psi powers, just as you do. Zachary has asked me to evaluate your abilities so that we can—"

Gaea went rigid, fighting to control her breathing. Compassion flitted across Niko's face.

"—better help you and give a more thorough report to our commander. Are you willing to answer some questions about that?"

Gaea closed her eyes briefly, obviously trying calm herself. Niko moved gracefully across the Nav Bay toward the younger woman and squatted down next to her, waiting until Gaea was ready before speaking again.

"It's all right to be afraid, Gaea," she said. "But you know that none of us will ever hurt you, or let you be hurt if we can possibly help it."

Gaea nodded, and Niko smiled.

"All right, let's rotate your seat so you can face me," she said, suiting actions to words, "and make sure you're comfortable." Goose rotated his own seat to bring it back in line with Gaea's, and Niko flickered a wry look at him before turning her attention back to the girl. "Does anything need adjustment? No? All right." Niko sat opposite Gaea and settled back into the chair. "To save you having to do this again, Gaea, I'd like to record this session."

Gaea tensed again and Niko raised a hand in a placating gesture. "It's just for our commander; he'll want some kind of record of your abilities, and this means you won't have to demonstrate more than once." A half-smile flickered across the older woman's lips.

Gaea took a deep breath and nodded again.

"Thank you, Gaea. GV, begin recording." Niko pulled her handheld computer from her belt and made a notation on it.

"Yes, ma'am," the AI responded.

"Please repeat your name, age, and address, and give consent for this session to be recorded," Niko requested.

Gaea licked her lips. "I'm—my name is Gaea. I don't have a last name, I don't think. Or an address. Now. Um—I'm seventeen years—"

"GV, pause," Niko cut in, looking in dismay over at Goose. "Shane..."

I was expecting this.Goose raised his hands in a shrug. "What are we going to do, Niko, call her mommy?" He winced, realizing what he'd said, and continued, "I don't think 'underage' really applies here."

Niko sat still for a moment before sighing lightly. "GV, resume. Gaea, please state your age again."

"I'm seventeen."

"Legally we are required to have your parent or guardian here unless you have applied for, and been granted, legal adult status."

"Um... I don't—" her voice cracked, steadied— "have any parents, or a guardian. And I've been taking care of myself since I was seven years old, except for Maggie."

"Maggie?" Goose straightened, interest piqued again.

Gaea smiled sadly. "She found me when I was, oh, eleven or twelve, I think. I was living in a ventilation shaft where she worked. I lived on the streets after I ran away. She took care of me so I didn't have to scrounge for food or a place to sleep any more. She called me Lily."

"How can we contact her?" Niko asked. Gaea shook her head.

"She died a few years ago. She was sick for a long time, something to do with the factory where she worked, I think. She taught me to sew." Gaea straightened, and for the first time Goose heard pride in her voice.

"You said you lived on the streets," Niko said. "How did you learn to survive? Most children don't manage well on their own."

Gaea moistened her lips. "I—made people help me," she whispered. "Like... I made the owner of a market like me so she would give me food every morning. And—there were a lot of other kids—" Her voice broke off, and Niko opened her hands in an unspoken _Go on_.

"I made them tell me—made them _want_ to tell me everything about living on the streets," Gaea continued, "like how to steal food and blankets and... find warm places to sleep and how to spot... bad people. But I knew how to do that part better than any of them could ever hope to." A bitter tone came into her voice for a moment. "They knew a lot more useful things. Like how to pick locks and get fake ID cards. Like that." Her shoulders curled inward. "I did a lot of bad things," she whispered.

"Most homeless children do, to stay alive," Niko answered calmly. "No one's going to hold it against you now. What happened then?"

"Um..." Gaea scrubbed a sleeve across her face and visibly composed herself. "Then I found the ventilation shaft when I was... I'm not sure, nine? And I lived in it until Maggie found me."

"And what did you do after she died?" Niko asked. Gaea met her eyes.

"I got fake papers and went to Mars. I didn't have any money so I made a courier ship's pilot think I was another courier and he let me ride there with him. And then I took care of myself. I got a job—it wasn't much, I just cleaned buildings, but I had my own apartment."

"So you've essentially been living as an adult for the past two years?" Goose put in.

"Yeah, I guess."

Niko looked across at Goose, her eyes uncertain. He shrugged and gave her his best Hell-if-I-know look. She sighed and returned her gaze to the younger woman. "I'm not sure what your legal status is, Gaea," Niko confessed, "but with your consent I'd like to continue. Is that all right?"

Gaea shrugged, eyes fixed on the floor. "Yeah, I guess."

"Thank you." Niko paused as if to gather her thoughts. "Gaea, I'd like to hear about the history of your abilities. When did they surface?"

Gaea blinked. "Um—I guess I don't remember."

"Can you remember the first time you used your abilities?"

"I... guess I remember waking up from a bad dream and Ma—, um, Mira was there and she already knew what the dream was about so I must have touched her mind. I can't even remember myself what I dreamed, maybe falling. It must have been, she said, 'I'll c-catch you.' She told me it was all right." Gaea looked away as tears once again filled her eyes. She sniffled.

"Do you know how old you were?" Niko asked, busying herself with her handheld and ignoring the tears.

"Um... maybe three? She—I wasn't four yet," Gaea said, and at the pain in her voice Goose shifted his weight in dismayed sympathy.

Niko's eyebrows rose slightly, but her voice was smooth as she asked, "So you think your telepathy was active as early as three years of age?" Her eyes flicked to Goose, holding a hint of something he couldn't immediately decipher, and then back to Gaea's face.

"I guess."

"Good. Now, do you remember the first time you consciously touched someone else's mind?"

"I wasn't much older, I guess. I was with M—Mira, in my mind, a lot. She didn't mind, she loved me. But she died." Her lips quivered. "Then later _he_ made me practice all the time, listening and sending. And moving things. He made me start with feathers and little weights, but I got bored. I—I couldn't—I—don't—"

Gaea's voice choked off, and a soft wail emerged from her throat. Goose felt his stomach tighten in response to a wholly unexpected surge of grief and terror. What the hell—? A moment later he was out of his seat and crouching next to her. Her eyes were huge, terrified.

"Gaea, what's wrong?" Worry creased Niko's forehead, and she leaned forward slightly.

Gaea burst into tears.

"GV, pause recording," Niko said calmly, and then she leaned forward to touch the fingertips of one hand to Gaea's temple, stroking lightly. "It's all right," Niko whispered. "It's all right." She kept up the gentle motion of her fingers, stroking Gaea's forehead and hair, as the girl regained control of her emotions.

"I'm sorry," Gaea hiccupped. "I don't know what's wrong with me." Goose rose, fumbled in a nearby locker, and crouched back down to offer her a tissue. She took it and swiped at her eyes before blowing her nose. "Thank you." She took two deep breaths and settled herself.

"GV, please resume." Niko leaned back in her chair. "Gaea, can you tell me why you're crying?"

She shook her head. "I'm not sure. I just keep hearing his, Latham's, voice in my head, with all those rules, never this, never that, over and over, and I just want it to _stop_..." She put one hand on her forehead and sniffed again.

Niko's eyes narrowed. She glanced over at Goose. "Shane, did you—" _Did they do this to you?_ her look asked.

"Not like this."

Niko frowned, looking thoughtful. "Gaea, would you let me do a reading on you?" 

Gaea tensed, and Goose awkwardly patted her arm. "Niko doesn't pry," he offered.

"Your mind belongs to you, Gaea," Niko added firmly. "I will never read you without your permission. Right now, if you consent to it, I'll use a gift called psychometry to look into your past. I wouldn't be reading your mind but rather watching events as they happened. I'll be looking for one specific thing, and I won't intrude where I'm not wanted."

Slowly Gaea relaxed. "Okay," she whispered. Goose rose to his feet and leaned against the side of her chair, too restless to sit again.

Once again Niko leaned forward and put one hand to Gaea's temple. With the other, the left, she touched the golden badge at her belt. The pale golden glow of Niko's powers surrounded the two of them, and Gaea flinched.

"It's all right, Gaea," Niko said calmly, her eyes closed. "It's just the charge from my Series Five implant."

The two sat quietly for a few moments. Goose studied them, bathed in golden light: two women, more alike than not, who— He tried to shut the thought off, but it popped up in spite of his efforts. Who are both becoming important to me. He shifted uncomfortably. Don't go there, Gooseman. Niko's your friend, Gaea's... sort of like a relative. I guess. Don't make a big deal of it.

Don't think about kissing Niko, either. Or especially about the huge shitstorm Wheiner's crowd would kick up if they thought you were seriously—

Just forget it, because it's never going to happen. His mouth twisted in a bitter smile. Yeah. A human telepath and a Supertrooper? They'd freeze us both before they'd let that go anywhere. His lip curled. It scares them too much.

Niko frowned and sat back, opening her eyes. The luminescence dimmed.

"It's hard to be sure," she said slowly, "but Gaea, the vision I saw leads me to believe your mind has been tampered with. Some kind of conditioning was imposed on you."

Gaea tightened her mouth, looking sick.

"I don't believe it could have been terribly strong, though," Niko continued. "You were able to choose freedom for yourself and make an independent life. Do you often find yourself getting upset when you think about these rules?"

"Y-yeah." Gaea swallowed hard. "I always just thought it was b-bad memories."

Niko looked compassionately at her. "I think we can help you overcome that conditioning eventually. Do you think you can continue, or do you need to stop for a while?"

"No. No. I want to keep going." Gaea took on a look of stubborn determination.

Niko smiled and picked up her datapad again. "So you consciously used your telepathy at the age..."

Goose watched in appreciation as skillfully, gently, Niko led Gaea through the questions: when, how, for what purpose she had used her abilities; how strong they seemed to be; how easy or difficult she found it to use them.

"So you don't remember a time when your telepathy wasn't active," Niko summed up, eyes flickering up and down her notes. "The psychokinesis manifested at age four, when your foster mother was out of the room and you wanted a toy from a shelf. You've practiced these skills fairly consistently from the time they manifested—"

"Except when the headaches came," Gaea cut in, and blinked in surprise. "I forgot about that," she added slowly, an odd expression crossing her face. "Why did I forget about it?"

Niko glanced sharply up at her. "Headaches? When did you begin having them? Do you still get them?"

"No, no, not since I was little," she answered. "Um... I don't think I ever got them when I lived with... Mira. I remember having to take a lot of medicine after the car accident. It tasted bad and I cried a lot."

"Did you sustain a head injury in the crash?" Niko asked, eyes intent.

"No... I was fine. I wasn't even scratched, just—" Tears welled up again, and she dashed them away impatiently. "I was with M—Mira, when—the accident happened. In my head."

Niko stiffened. "You were in telepathic contact with her?" she demanded. Gaea flinched again.

"Yes," the girl whispered. "I cried for weeks after he took me away."

Niko sank back against her seat. Her eyes closed for a brief moment. "I'm so sorry," she said quietly, her gaze full of pity. "That's a terribly traumatic experience for anyone, let alone a child."

Gaea stared at her lap, getting hold of her emotions.

"Well, um... The headaches. I guess they started after the crash. I just remember horrible pain in my head—and all the pills. Some of them were hard to swallow for a little kid, but they made me learn."

"Do you know what kind of pills they were?" Niko asked.

"No. I think some of them were just painkillers or vitamins." She laughed suddenly. "I forgot the vitamins. They were somebody's idea of fruit flavored. But some of the pills were odd colors, green or grey or pink, a really bright pink sort of gel tablet. They gave me a lot of those."

Goose tensed. Pink gel tabs..."Those pink tabs—Gaea, do you remember how you felt after you took them?"

She blinked and looked up at him. "Well—no, not really."

"Did your behavior change during that time?" he asked.

"Well, of course it did," she said impatiently. "I hated the place, I wanted my mother, I was miserable, and I cried all the time."

"Temper tantrums? Outbursts of temper or aggressiveness?" he pressed.

"Goose?" Niko asked softly.

He sank back into the chair next to Gaea. "Genetic enabling factor," he said heavily. "They used it to activate and enhance the special features built into the Supertroopers' genetic structure. I... quit taking it. I didn't need it, and I didn't like how it made me feel and act."

Gaea stared at him. "You're talking about a mutagen," she said, once again looking sick to her stomach.

They stared at her.

"Well, you don't have to look like that," she said impatiently. "I learned all kinds of stuff there. I could play chess by the age of six. I learned math and physics. I even had biology and physiology, with an emphasis on diseases and congenital defects. Can you guess why?" Her voice rang with bitterness. "I didn't put it all together for a long time after."

Goose shook his head, keeping his attention on her face, but a cold voice in his head was saying, Oh, I can guess. I can guess way too easily.

"I know four ways to cause a stroke," she said woodenly. "I can mimic several kinds of deadly heart conditions and inhibit brainstem activity in a number of ways in humans, Andorians, Kiwis, and a couple other species. I—"

Goose's hand closed over hers. "You don't have to," he said quietly. "You don't have to do any of those things."

She stared emptily at him. There was a pause.

"So, Goose," Niko said, "you think the headaches were caused by genetic enabling factor?"

He shrugged. "We'd have to run it by Dr. Nagata to be sure, but that's my best uneducated guess."

Niko made a note. "The trauma of feeling your foster mother's death may have exacerbated the headaches, though that's not usually a symptom of that kind of damage. The depression is much more typical." She looked up from her handheld. "Gaea, you've mentioned telepathy and psychokinesis. You used some kind of energy charge, the nature of which you say you don't fully understand, in an attempt to wipe the data chip on Louis Tulley's vidcam. You mentioned dreams that may have been clairvoyant. Do you have any other psionic abilities?"

Gaea blinked. "Just... I heal quickly."

"How quickly?" Niko asked, writing rapidly.

The hiss of Niko's boot knife slipping free of its sheath sounded loud in the relative hush of the Nav Bay. Niko yelped and aborted a grab for it, obviously realizing she would only cut herself. Goose came half out of his seat as the hilt settled into Gaea's left hand.

"Is this clean?" Gaea asked coolly, pushing up her right sleeve.

"What—" Niko began.

Gaea drew in a breath; on the exhalation she drew the knife sharply down the top of her right forearm. Blood welled from the long, shallow wound, and her mouth tightened slightly in reaction.

"Gaea!" Goose nearly shouted. "What are you _doing_?"

"Shh," the young woman said absently, seemingly staring _through_ the wound. An odd sort of stillness descended over her.

"Goose, be quiet." Niko's voice was soft, but her tone brooked no argument. He was opening his mouth to argue anyway when he saw it.

Gaea's arm was healing. The bleeding slowed and stopped, and Goose stared in shock as he watched the flesh knit from the inside. Barely twenty seconds after the cut had been inflicted, the skin closed, leaving only a thin pink line that faded and was gone moments later.

Rousing, Gaea wiped the blade on the tissue Goose had given her and offered the hilt to Niko.

"Thank you," she said. "I didn't think you'd give it to me if I asked."

Niko took the blade and sheathed it. "You were right. That was rash."

Gaea shrugged, scrubbing at the blood smeared over her skin. Goose grabbed a handful of tissue and dropped it in her lap. "Yeah, probably," she said, picking up the fresh tissues and wiping up the last of the mess. "It's harder to do that with serious wounds. I got burned really badly once, and it took a lot longer. And I can't do it on other people. But did that tell you how fast?"

"Yes, Gaea." Niko looked wry. "Thank you. Do you have any other surprises for us?"

Gaea hunched her shoulders, looking suddenly embarrassed. "No."

"Is there anything else I should know for my initial report on your abilities or your background?"

Gaea seemed to shrink into her seat. "No," she almost whispered. "I don't think so."

"Gaea, it's all right. You did very well," Niko told her gently. "Thank you very much." She cocked her head slightly. "We'll be arriving at BETA soon. How does a hot shower, a change of clothes, and a square meal sound? You can have them in any order you like."

"Thank you," Gaea mumbled.

Niko rose. "I'm going to go prepare my report. Goose, I think Zachary wants to speak with you before we set down."

"Sure." He shrugged. "Now?"

Niko indicated Gaea with a sidelong glance. "Why don't you give it about ten more minutes? That gives me time to brief him." She turned gracefully on her heel in a swirl of auburn hair and cycled the hatch. "Thank you again, Gaea," she said over her shoulder. "Perhaps you should try to relax for a few minutes. GV can help you if you need anything."

Goose watched as the hatch closed behind her slender form.


	9. Chapter 9

On board _Ranger One_

7/30/2098, 2098, 0732

 

 

Doc stepped into the cockpit and settled into the copilot's seat. He looked over at Zachary from the corner of his eye and caught Zach looking at him. Doc smiled uneasily.

"I guess this thing has us both a little on edge," Zachary said.

"Well, gee, Captain, I can't imagine why," Doc answered. "We've just uncovered evidence of a black ops project that someone's apparently willing to kill over and we're on our way back to Earth to try and expose it. What's to be nervous about?"

Zach shook his head. "I just hope we're doing the right thing."

"Amen to that," Doc agreed, his voice unwontedly serious. Zachary turned back to his screen, his brows lowering in thought.

They traveled in silence for a while, watching the stars flow silently past the hull of their ship. Doc's mind drifted to projects he had in progress, ran through the conversation he'd had with Q-Ball a few weeks ago about AI neuroses, and settled finally on the matter of Goose's recent behavior.

It was no mystery to Doc just where the younger Ranger had been snooping; when you knew, logically, what someone might be looking for and were a better hacker to boot, whatever dirty laundry there was inevitably got aired, if only on the screen of your own terminal. Doc, no stranger to ugly deals and uglier cover-ups, had shaken his head in sympathetic dismay over the things he'd found, but Goose's reactions had caused him more than a little concern. Not cool, my Goose man, he thought. The smoldering rage Goose had tried unsuccessfully to conceal from his teammates had nearly landed them all in a major heap of unhappy, especially once Commander Walsh had gotten involved.

Not that I blame him. I'd be pissed off, too, if someone was treating me and my relatives like disposable people.

Zach shifted in his seat, and Doc turned to find his commanding officer watching him.

"This case is upsetting Goose," Zachary said. "You have any thoughts you want to share?"

"What about, Zach?" Doc asked. "I have thoughts about all kinds of stuff." As a warning look appeared on his captain's face, he hastily added, "This bugs me too. I think the whole Supertrooper angle gets to him."

"You believe her story?" Zach asked, obviously trying for an even tone.

"Well..." Doc temporized. "It's true she has no records at all. It's obviously true she's got some funky abilities. And she sure seems scared. Plus there's those three men Goose intercepted. It all stacks up to something pretty suspicious, Captain. If you don't buy what she says, what _do_ you think is the truth?"

"I don't know, Doc, but I aim to find out," Zach answered, and at the stubborn set of his chin Doc had to hold back a smile.

The hatch opened and Niko stepped through. As it closed behind her, she leaned back against it and pressed a hand to her face with a sigh, datapad held against her body like a tiny shield.

Zach came half out of his seat. "Niko...?" he asked, his face filling with anxiety. Doc rose and stepped aside.

"I'm okay, just tired." Niko stepped forward and sank into the seat Doc had just vacated with a grateful smile in his direction. "Zach, that young woman needs our help. Badly."

"What have you got for me?" Zach asked.

She tapped the handheld and ticked down the screen. "Telepathy, psychokinesis, limited self-healing, possibly clairvoyance on an noncontrolled, subconscious level, and whatever it was she did to Louis Tulley's video camera." She took a deep breath and looked up at him. "And someone has tampered with her mind. She's psychologically unstable, Zachary. She needs help."

"Great." Doc groaned. "Just what we need. A psychologically unstable Supertrooper with big-time psi powers."

Zach frowned at him. "Recommendations, Niko?"

"I don't think she's dangerous. Remember that she lived in hiding for two years on Mars without causing any trouble. It wasn't until someone attacked her that she used her abilities. And Goose seems to have developed a rapport with her. He's been able to help her calm herself on more than one occasion. I'd recommend letting that continue. She seems to have had very few positive relationships in her life."

Zach bowed his head thoughtfully. "Did you record the interview?"

"GV, play record, pilot's auxiliary screen."

The three teammates watched in silence as Niko's interview with Gaea played itself out. Doc winced in sympathy more than once, unable to stop himself from shaking his head.

Oh man, someone has really done a number on that kid.

The record ended, and Zachary sat back in his seat. "You saw evidence of mental conditioning, Niko—like some kind of programming? You're sure?"

Niko rubbed her forehead lightly. "It seemed to have happened a long time ago, but it's there, Zachary. I'm sure of it."

"Sir," GV announced quietly, "we have reached our jump point."

Zach touched a few keys and ordered, "Announce the jump and go to warp, GV."

"Yes, sir!" The intercom clicked, and GV's voice sounded through the ship. "All hands prepare for warp in five seconds, four—"

The countdown ended. They felt the infinitesimal shiver through the skin of the ship that told them _Ranger One_ had just gone into warp, and outside the stars vanished, to be replaced by the red streaks of hyperspace. An eyeblink later, the stars reappeared in slightly different positions as their ship warped back out into outer Earthspace.

The hatch cycled again, and Goose stepped into the cockpit.

"You wanted to talk to me, Captain?"

Doc groaned inwardly as the tension level rose a notch. "Yes," Zach said. "Doc, Niko, would you please head back to the Nav Bay to keep an eye on our... guest?"

Niko stood again, and she and Doc turned to go.

 

 

Goose stood at parade rest as his teammates quietly left the bridge. Zach watched him for a moment, leaning against the back of his seat, arms folded, considering.

"You've been tense lately, Gooseman. What's on your mind?"

Goose held quite still, but Zach could see his mind racing behind the calm mask of his face. "Nothing work related, Captain," he answered finally.

"Well, maybe not, but when it starts affecting your work, I start getting concerned. And judging from what I've seen on this mission, I think it may be time to get concerned."

Goose stiffened slightly. "I don't know what you're talking about, Zach."

Damn stubborn—

Zachary resisted the urge to grind his teeth. "Gooseman, I know you don't like what we're doing. Your objections have been noted—and now I expect you to do your job."

The blond man stiffened again. "This stinks, Captain!" he snapped, voice rising at every word. "We're all full of talk, but you know damn well we can't do a damn thing about it if they decide to walk up and just take Gaea wherever the hell they feel like!" He finished at a shout, green eyes blazing in rage.

Zachary stood very tall and looked levelly at his youngest team member with cold blue eyes.

"Are you done, Ranger Gooseman?"

Zachary barely got his arm up in time. The force of Goose's fist as Zachary caught it in the palm of his bionic hand rocked Zach's entire frame. Gently he lowered the younger man's unresisting arm to his side and let go.

"You're taking this personally, aren't you?" he asked quietly, and nearly winced at the stricken look in Goose's eyes.

"Sit down," he said gently.

Goose sat.

"Look, Goose," Zach said, sinking into his own chair, "you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. But I need you to do your job and do it right. I need to know I can trust you and that you trust me. The day we don't trust one another is the day we might as well turn in our badges." He reached out a hand to gently clasp Goose's forearm. "I don't pretend to understand what this case means to you. But I'm asking you as your commanding officer and your friend to set aside your personal feelings and do what we've got to do."

Elbows on knees, Goose leaned his forehead on the heels of his hands and dug his fingers into his hair as he stared at the floor.

"I don't—I can't—" he said, his voice barely audible, and stopped.

"We'll be close to Earth soon, Goose," Zachary said quietly. "Go sit by yourself for a bit."

Goose rose and turned to go. "Captain, I—" he started, pausing with his back to Zach. The hatch opened.

"It's all right, Gooseman. Go on."

Zach watched Goose as he stepped through the opening, body tense and head bowed, and strode away down the corridor. The hatch slid shut, and Zach sighed and toggled the comm.

"Doc, please return to the cockpit for the approach to Earth."

"Aye, Captain."

Zachary Foxx stared down at his hands on the control board and leaned back in his seat, eyes closing in weariness. Heavy case, and no one to share the weight.

Eliza... I miss you.


	10. Chapter 10

Secure guest quarters, Level 8, BETA Mountain

7/30/2098, 0828

 

 

Niko turned to look at Gaea. The young woman stood in the middle of the sparsely furnished guest room, staring wide-eyed about her.

"The bathroom is through that way," Niko said, hiding a smile. "There's a small kitchen. It's nothing fancy, but if you cook you can use it for simple things. I don't know how long you'll be here... Do you have a change of clothes? There's a small laundry machine tucked away in the bathroom."

Gaea nodded.

"How about that meal?" Niko continued. "Or do you want to have a shower first?"

The girl shrugged, looking at the floor. Niko studied her for a moment. "Tell you what," she said. "I'll have GV call down for a food tray, and you can eat when you feel hungry. A delivery bot will bring the tray, so you don't have to worry about anyone's seeing you." She pointed at the comm unit. "If you need me, or Ranger Gooseman, you can press the Call button any time and ask GV for one of us. He'll be listening for a page from this unit. Don't speak to anyone but one of my team, Commander Walsh, or GV. If the comm pings, don't answer; we won't be contacting you that way. You're tagged in the entry logs for BETA Mountain as a visiting scientist from Andor, so it's important that no one see you. Is there anything you need?"

"No," Gaea mumbled. "Thanks."

"All right," Niko said quietly. "I have to go report in, and then I need a change of clothes myself. Take your time. Catch up on your sleep, too, if you like. One of us will come and knock if we need to talk to you. All right?"

Gaea nodded again, her eyes glancing off Niko's face like small stones skipping along the surface of a pond.

Niko smiled. "I'll see you later," she said gently. She glanced over her shoulder as the door slid shut behind her. Gaea hadn't moved. Standing with bowed head in the center of the room and clutching her bag, she looked very small.

 

 

Commander Walsh leaned back in his seat as Niko's recording ended. Silence settled over his office.

"Sir—" Goose started, and was cut off by the commander's raised hand.

"Owen?" Walsh said quietly.

"It's hard to say, Joseph," Nagata answered. "Her profile fits the one which Greer Latham proposed for his project. But without hard evidence, we cannot proceed much further."

Walsh pinched the bridge of his nose, then dropped his hand with a sigh. "We'll need a full genetic workup," he said heavily. "Niko, good work with that interview. You got a good range of her abilities on record."

"Thank you, sir."

"And you've obviously established a rapport with her, Gooseman. I understand you're the one who convinced her to come here." At Goose's stiff nod, Walsh nodded in turn. "Well done. Thank you."

"Sir," Goose said, "she's only here because we promised to protect her."

"I'm aware of that, Ranger Gooseman," Walsh answered. "She herself is the best physical evidence we have. BETA is not going to misplace her."

Goose's jaw clenched.

"Gooseman, Niko, you will escort Gaea to the Medical Lab for genetic testing," Walsh continued. "They'll be expecting you at 1100. Doc, you'll continue sifting through the BETA databases for documentary evidence. Zachary, I want you to work with one of our legal AIs to comb the legal codes. If there's a loophole for these people to squirm through, I want to know about it. We have to be two steps ahead of them all the way, or this investigation will go nowhere. Any questions?"

"Yeah," Doc said. "Can we go start?"

Walsh gave him a look that Niko easily interpreted: I don't want to know, and you are not going to tell me. Doc assumed a look of uncomprehending innocence, and Walsh rolled his eyes upwards for patience and folded his hands on his desk.

"Dismissed."

 

 

Niko fell into step with Goose as he headed down the hall. "We've got more than an hour before they're expecting us," she said. "I had time to shower but not to get anything to eat. Could we stop in the lounge?"

"Sure."

They walked in silence down the corridors. Niko sneaked a glance at her teammate, worried at the tight muscles around his eyes. She frowned slightly—and then blinked, startled, as she found his eyes fixed on her.

"Well?" he asked dryly. Niko blushed.

"Shane..." she began, but trailed off, unsure how to go on. He looked away, and the silence loomed up between them again. Niko worked up her nerve again.

"What's wrong, Shane?"

He gave her a guarded glance. The wariness in his look struck her through, and she sighed.

"You know if you need to talk about anything, I'm here to listen," she said quietly. They rounded a corner and walked down the hall to the lounge door. Niko paused outside. "I'll be right back," she said, and turned to go in.

His hand on her arm stopped her. She looked over her shoulder at him.

"Thanks," he said, voice pitched for her ears only. In a louder tone, he added, "Nah, you don't have to eat on the run. I'll spot you lunch."

She smiled and stepped to the door.

 

 

"...So I said to him, mister, you _better_ just be happy to see me!"

Niko nearly choked on her fruit juice as she burst out laughing.

Goose assumed an expression of deep gloom. "Naturally... it was a gun in his pocket."

Niko kept laughing, shaking her head. "How do you get yourself into these situations, Goose?" she teased.

"Hey, lady, you know what they say," he replied with the familiar cocky grin. She finished with him: "No guts, no glory!"

Smiling, Niko stood, picking up the tray holding the remnants of her meal. "Well..." she said, trying to keep the smile. "Guess we'd better go. We've only got about twenty more minutes."

He stood, that shadow she'd seen earlier flitting across his face. "Yeah," he said heavily. He waited while she took her tray to the recycler; when she turned back, she saw him watching her, and color rose to her cheeks.

Stop that, Niko, she told herself firmly, and by the time she reached his side, her face no longer felt warm.

She stopped before him and looked questioningly up at him.

"Let's go," he said.

 

 

Goose stepped through the door of Gaea's guest room and stopped in his tracks. Niko nearly ran into him.

"Goose?" she asked his back.

Silently he moved aside to let her pass. She entered the room and glanced around. The place seemed echoingly empty.

"She must be resting," Niko said experimentally, but even as the words passed her lips she knew they weren't true. She glanced sidelong at Goose. A muscle jumped in his jaw. She wasn't sure she had ever seen him look so grim.

"She's gone," he answered flatly. "I can smell traces of the gas they used."

"Shane—" she started.

"No, Niko," he cut her off, and strode to the window. "Just—please—" The words seemed dragged out of him. "Can you tell me how they got in?"

She walked slowly to the center of the room, where Gaea had been standing the last time Niko saw her. As she knelt to lay one hand on the floor and touched her fingers to her badge, she heard Goose opening a link to Commander Walsh on his wrist comm.

She saw—

Gaea's tired, pale face, body curled, defensive even in sleep... The hiss of gas, a canister rolling across the floor... Men in breathers, faces hidden, Gaea limp in their hands... 

The door sliding shut on the silent, empty room.

Niko sighed and opened her eyes. Goose stood by the window, watching her.

"I called it in," he told her in a dead voice.

"I'm sorry," she said softly.

"I know."

 

The halls of BETA Mountain resounded with the clatter of booted feet. The search encompassed every storage room, every gloomy back hallway—and he knew, as surely as he knew his name, that it was too late, all of it. 

Gaea's bag between his feet, Goose sat unspeaking on the sofa where, Niko said, Gaea had been sleeping when they had come to take her away. Niko herself stood behind him, radiating concern. In the corner Doc and his tweakers worked to extract a usable image from the video records as Zachary leaned against the wall, arms folded and face set in grim lines.

"Here," Goose heard Doc say. "I think we got something."

Goose looked over. Doc had brought the image up on the comm terminal screen. The team watched as Gaea looked around herself, as Niko spoke to her and then left the room. The young woman stood unmoving for painful minutes before turning to go into the bathroom, taking her bag with her. Doc fast forwarded the image to the moment when Gaea emerged again, damp hair neatly braided and wearing a different set of clothes. She wandered into the bedroom but emerged moments later, face unreadable but body language uneasy. At last she settled onto the sofa, curled up with the strap of her bag clutched in her hands, and fell asleep almost immediately.

Doc moved the image ahead again. "We're still trying to figure out how they got in here," he announced. "Everyone who came and went from BETA Mountain this morning had all the right security codes. No incidents, no problems, nothing out of the ordinary at all."

Goose watched as onscreen the door slid open a crack—and the image froze and then broke up into random pixels.

"Damn!" Doc swore. "Pathfinder, get in there and clean that up."

"Okey dokey, Doc-i-chokey," the program chirped, and vanished into the terminal. Zach gave Doc an incredulous look. The hacker only shrugged.

After what seemed to Goose an interminable wait, Pathfinder emerged from the screen. "That's the best I can do, Boss," it squeaked. Through the static on the terminal screen shadowy figures moved from the doorway to Gaea's side, lifted her, and carried her out. Moments after the door shut the interference abruptly cleared.

"How'd they get her out without a fight?" Zach wondered aloud.

"Gas," Niko said from behind Goose. "I saw it in my vision. They just opened the door a crack, rolled it in, and waited for it to do its work. They wore breathers. I couldn't see their faces."

Zachary scowled furiously. "Who the hell do these people think they are?" he spat. "They come waltzing into BETA Mountain like they own the place and carry off one of the most important prisoners we've ever had, and our security system can't even get a look at their faces."

Goose stared down at his hands and tried not to move. Behind him he heard Niko draw in her breath.

"I'm heading back to work," Doc said, his normally pleasant face set in a dark frown. "I have a serious desire to nail these guys to the wall." He shut down his CDU and clipped it to his belt

Zach straightened. "I'm right with you, Doc." Both of them glanced over at Goose.

Just keep it together, Gooseman, he told himself coldly. He kept his eyes lowered to hide the rage that simmered there.

Admit it to yourself, asshole. It's not just anger. It's guilt.

Niko shifted her weight, almost imperceptibly, and he heard the soft rustle of fabric. She must have made some signal, because Zach quirked a brow, and he and Doc left the room.

Behind him Niko stood utterly still. Silence stole over the room, and he heard the rhythm of her breathing and his own. Her scent drifted slowly into his nostrils, worry and sadness mingled with the unique fragrance that was Niko. He heard her indrawn breath and stood abruptly before she could speak.

"I gotta go," he said roughly, and he turned away and strode out the door and away from her, taking his rage with him.

I'm sorry, Niko. I can't.

 

 

 

Shane Gooseman's quarters

7/31/2098, 0348

 

 

Goose jerked awake and half upright in bed, gasping for breath. Who—what woke me? he thought fuzzily, and then it hit him.

Oh, no...

He put his hands over his face, seeing the images again:

_A small, windowless room. A narrow bed. A rough hand shaking her out of the beginnings of a dream._

_Gaea, wake up. Get out of bed. Now!_

_The floor cold on her bare, stumbling feet, the draft in the brightly lit hallway unpleasantly cool on her skin through the thin fabric of the shapeless nightgown._

_An examination table. Impersonal hands, instruments, humiliation and impotent rage._

_The seat of a chair, cold metal. The bite of a needle in the crook of her elbow. And a voice, waking fear and loathing in the pit of her belly._

_You've been very bad, Gaea. I'm going to help you get better._

Goose sat unmoving for a long time before sleep claimed him again.


	11. Chapter 11

Series Five Rangers' office

7/31/2098, 0932

 

 

Zach frowned and glanced at his chrono again.

"What's keeping Gooseman?" he grumbled. "We need to keep moving on this investigation. The commander's fit to be tied."

Yeah, Zach, and you're not much better, Doc thought.

The door to the office hissed open and Goose passed through. From the corner of his eye Doc saw Niko twitch as if someone had pinched her. But he was too occupied himself with staring at Goose to think much about it.

What's wrong with him?

The signs were there, if less than obvious. He wasn't quite haggard, but his face was too pale, perhaps even a little drawn. His eyes—Doc flinched away, thinking, That's way too close to how Cousin Robbie looked the night his team walked into a house and found three dead kids in the basement. Goose caught Doc's glance, and his face went set and unreadable. He seated himself at the conference table.

"Sorry I'm late, Captain," Goose said stiffly.

"Gooseman, what's—"

"Any new developments?" Goose cut in. Zach's eyebrows lowered in annoyance and he started to speak.

Niko shifted her weight suddenly, and Zach jumped slightly and broke off in the middle of opening his mouth to glare at her. She gave him a meaningful look, the meaning of which Doc nevertheless failed to catch. But the look in Zach's eye—that, he could interpret just fine.

"Uh... nothing yet," Doc put in, hoping to defuse the tension rising in the room. "I did get a little more out of the image from Gaea's room, though." He snatched the CDU from his belt and powered it up, touching his badge. Come on, guys, he thought. Get out here before these three kill one another.

"Searchlight, grab me that audio you pulled from the recording earlier," he requested.

"Okay, Doc!" the program squeaked. The holofield circled once, twice, and then a staticky recording began to play.

At first they heard only vague thumping sounds: footfalls, perhaps, or objects being moved. Then a muffled voice, clearly a man's, muttered, "Move it. Countermeasures cut ou—" Goose's head jerked around at the sound. The audio cut out and resumed a moment later with more footfalls and what sounded to Doc like a grunt of exertion. Then faintly they heard the rumble of wheels over a hard floor.

"That's it, Boss," Pathfinder said.

"Play that voice again, Doc," Goose said. He listened intently. "Again." On the third repetition he sat back, face grim. "That's the man from Mars City," he said. "The black-haired one. He seemed to be in charge."

Zach spoke into the brief silence. "How did he get back to Earth so fast?" he asked slowly. "We lifted off barely three and a half hours after their attempt at the police station."

"Pathfinder, run a records request from Traffic Control," Doc said. He glanced at his captain. "There are only a couple ways they could have beat _Ranger One_ back here, and most folks don't have access to those methods." He glanced at his CDU screen—and frowned in disbelief at the information. "Whaddaya mean, restricted?" he demanded, and wheeled his chair over to his desk to open a comm link.

Zach sat up straighter. "Doc?"

"Traffic Control," answered a bored male voice. The video clicked on almost as an afterthought. On seeing his caller's face, the operative, a portly man with graying hair, jerked out of his slouch. "Yes, sir!"

"This is Galaxy Ranger Walter Hartford requesting data on Traffic Control record number A259-663," Doc said crisply.

The operative touched several keys and frowned down at his screen. "I'm sorry, sir, but that information is restricted."

"I see the Restricted flag," Doc answered coolly. "Maybe you don't get it. I'm a Galaxy Ranger investigating a crime, and this ship may have something to do with it. I need that information."

The operative, visibly flustered, gulped. "Uh, sir, I'm, uh..."

Zachary rose and stepped into pickup range. The man blanched.

"This is Captain Zachary Foxx," Zach snapped. "What do you mean, restricted, mister? On whose authority?"

"Uh—sir—a-all it says is OPS, sir," the operative stuttered, breaking out in a sweat. "I—uh—"

Doc stared at the screen, a sinking feeling in his gut. "Forget it," he said in a gentler voice. "We never called you, got it?"

The operative stammered to a halt, staring at him.

"Got it?" Doc repeated patiently.

"Yes... sir."

Doc cut the link and turned his head to look at Goose. Sadness settled over him. Ah, Goose... I'm sorry, man.

"Doc, what the—" Zach burst out.

"OPS," Doc said quietly. "Goose, my friend, your little cousin there is mixed up in some really heavy trouble."

That shut Zach up, at least. They all stared at him. Doc saw a muscle in Goose's jaw flex as the rangy Supertrooper clenched his teeth.

"Doc?" Niko said calmly. "You said there were only a couple of ways they could have gotten here before us. What did you mean?"

He looked at her, then at his screen. "Give me a minute," he said, and bent over his keyboard. "Pathfinder, get in there and find a way around that damn tag."

"Right, Boss!"

Vaguely Doc heard Zach's protest, heard Niko's murmur as she counseled patience, but for Doc it made a distant second to the data stream. He kept typing as Pathfinder worked, the two of them coming at the problem from different directions. In the back of his mind, the Series Five implant linked him and his construct in a web of data. Inquiries refused, passwords denied—and then Pathfinder handed him root on a Traffic Control machine and he hacked his way to an account that could unlock the Restricted tag.

Bonus.

Descending from his data high and back into the world, Doc turned back to his teammates.

"This morning at 0743 a high-speed courier ship entered Earthspace," he said. "Think big honkin' Andorian hyperdrive with a dinky little cabin strapped on it. They're usually used on long interstellar trips because they beat most anything on long jumps. The records don't say where it warped out, and its point of origin doesn't appear in Traffic Control's records—but I've been able to confirm that it came from Mars. Regular inquiries about registry just get a Restricted flag. OPS people are sneaky bastards, and they don't like people poking into their business. In fact, that guy at Traffic Control probably bought himself a one-way ticket to Pluto Base if his boss ever finds out he even mentioned OPS."

"Doc!" demanded Zach. "What on earth is OPS?"

Doc sat back and rubbed one hand over his eyes. "Office of Planetary Security."

Zachary frowned. "I've never heard of it."

Doc smiled grimly. "Yeah, me neither." Almost as an afterthought he pushed off with his heels to move his chair back to the conference table.

"You said 0743," Niko said slowly. "We got clearance from Mars Spaceport just before 0700. How—?" Her eyes widened. "Are you saying—"

"You warped out _where_?" Doc said, grimacing. "The only way for that ship to have beat us is if they warped from way too close to Mars and came in way too close to Earth. That's the other reason people use those courier ships: they can jump much closer to gravity wells than your average Andorian drive–based ship because they're so tiny. That's how Mr. Suit and his buddies got back here so fast: they're crazy as loons and they have the clearances to override the usual Traffic Control rules. You all know that anybody else who tried it would find his butt arrested the second he set foot anywhere on a League world."

"Doc, what do you mean, _you've_ never heard of OPS?" Zach cut in. Doc looked over at him, knowing his face looked unwontedly serious.

"I'm not even supposed to know OPS exists," Doc told him, "and neither are you. Every so often while I'm looking something up I run into a record tagged 'Restricted'—and if I can't even find out who restricted it, dollars to donuts it's OPS. I did a little sniffing around—" he saw Zachary wince slightly, the too-familiar I-don't-want-to-know expression crossing his face "—and from what I can find they're very highly placed. Data on them is danged hard to come by." He turned his eyes to Goose.

"I'm sorry, my Goose man," he said as gently as he could. "I'm gonna give you and Gaea everything I've got, but..." he shook his head. "Even with the Doctor on your side, the odds are not good."

"That's our specialty," Niko said firmly. She reached across the conference table and touched her fingertips to the back of Goose's hand. "When you want the impossible, call on the Galaxy Rangers."

His face bleak, Goose stared at the wall and did not answer.

 

 

Shane Gooseman's quarters

8/1/2098, 0002

 

 

Goose stirred in his sleep but did not wake.

_Gaea, get up. He wants you. Get up! Rough hands tugged her up, shook her awake and out of dream._

_Again the cold floor, the cold chair under bright lights, the prick of a needle._

_Gaea... Your mother died because of you. It's your fault Mira's dead._

_A scent of skin, of hair, barely perceptible but wrenching in the memories it invoked._

_Gaea, sweetheart..._

Goose woke with the feel in his throat of screams that were not his.

 

 

 

BETA Mountain

0838

 

 

"Zach, wait up!" Zachary turned and waited as Doc trotted up to him. "You seen Gooseman yet this morning?"

Zachary frowned. "No," he answered slowly, and glanced at his chrono with furrowed brows.

Doc shook his head. "Captain, I think something's going on with him," he said quietly. "He's usually up with the dawn, but this is the second morning I've been in to breakfast with no sign of him."

"Maybe he's eating in his quarters."

"Maybe," Doc answered, "but I saw Niko in the commissary. She looked mighty worried about something, and she'd barely touched her breakfast."

The two men exchanged troubled looks.

Zach dropped his voice. "Anything new?"

"Not a thing, Captain. Believe me, you'll be the second to know."

 

 

 

Series Five Rangers' office

0906

 

 

"Something's been bothering me."

Doc and Niko turned to look at Zach. Goose kept his eyes on his screen, but Zach could see that he was paying attention.

"Only one, Zach?" Doc said lightly.

Zach snorted. "One thing among many. But this is serious. Doc, you were able to find out that OPS got here before we did because they used a courier ship—so clearly they can call on material resources as they need to. Then they got access to BETA Mountain in short order. Obviously they either have access codes of their own, possibly under fake IDs, or they were able to get hold of codes that belonged to someone else."

"That's not that hard to do," Doc noted. "It's all just part of a big database, and databases do what you tell them to do. But yeah, that's been bugging me too, 'cause that would argue that our system's compromised at a very high level, and I just haven't been seeing the signs. And—"

"And," Zach said, "in spite of all the precautions we took—not telling anyone but the commander and Dr. Nagata she was here, putting her down in the entry logs as a visiting scientist from Andor—they knew exactly where to find her."

There was a brief, loaded silence. Zach's team looked at him, waiting for him to say what they were all thinking.

"I think we have a mole."

 

 

 

Commander Walsh's office

0947

 

 

_"What?!"_

Zach suppressed a twitch as his bionic ear picked up Walsh's shout a little too well.

"I think there's a mole in BETA," he repeated. "Someone who's working for OPS."

"Pull up a chair, Captain." Walsh pinched the bridge of his nose. "Letting aside the fact that you're officially not supposed to know OPS exists, do you realize the sheer size of the political hot potato you've just dropped in my lap?"

"With all due respect, Commander, I didn't drop it," Zach said stiffly. "I just pointed it out."

Walsh blew out his breath in frustration. "Come down off that high horse before you fall off, Zach," he said, his voice tart. "I know it was a loaded question." His face relaxed somewhat. "What do you need from me?"

"Well, as you said, sir, it's a hot potato. We can't do a thing about it—officially. But we're going to need to ferret the person out sooner or later. We can't have confidential League law enforcement information being leaked to an Earth-centered partisan agency like OPS." Zach leaned forward and held out a chip.

"What's this?" Walsh asked, accepting it.

"I had Doc do a preliminary data sort for people whose security codes were used at any checkpoint or secured door inside the mountain on the night Gaea was taken," Zachary explained. "Then he did some cross checks to eliminate people with airtight alibis, and to be sure that nobody's codes were used at points that didn't match the person's known location." He made a wry face. "We did catch Private Salo's daughter using his door code to sneak out and see her boyfriend, but nothing else so far. The list of persons of interest is still fairly extensive. Doc recommends doing in-depth security audits on everyone at BETA who could have even the vaguest reason for being in the area of the secure guest quarters, or anywhere on Level 8, but that's a very wide net to cast and he'd be working alone. We're going to have to keep careful watch to catch this person, sir, and of course we can't let on that we know about him—or her—or OPS will just find someone else."

Walsh's face was grim. "I hate to believe that anyone who works for BETA would willingly spy for OPS, but unfortunately history is full of prime examples of moles, spies, and traitors."

"Yes, sir. Doc's got routines set up to catch anything the least bit unusual. He said he's 'sifting the Gibson with a teaspoon,' but I know if anyone can find traces, it's him. We're telling absolutely no one about this, of course—not even Commander Nagata—to keep the chances for accidental leaks to an absolute minimum."

"Understood, Zachary." The commander leaned back and folded his hands on his chest. "It strikes me we're about due for one of our periodic unannounced security audits anyway. Tell Doc he can work with Q-Ball and Buzzwang on those; have him work with files on anyone of interest in this case and leave the rest to the others. I'm sure he's more than capable of writing code that will 'randomly' assign the appropriate people to his desktop."

"Yes, sir."

"Good work on this, Zach. Keep me posted."

Too little, too late, thought Zach, but he stood and saluted, saying only, "Yes, sir."

He rather thought Walsh knew what he wasn't saying anyway.

 

 

 

Goose's quarters, BETA Mountain

8/2/2098, 1620

 

 

Goose emerged from the bathroom, toweling his hair dry—and yawned. He snarled in useless fury and flung the towel violently at the laundry hamper before sinking onto the bed, his head in his hands. Three nights in a row of someone else's hell had left him exhausted, pale, and irritable.

Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit...

Gaea, I'm sorry... I should never have let them bring you here.

He sat still for a time, fighting drowsiness, but at last his eyelids drifted shut. Drooping and exhausted, Shane curled onto his side and fell into sleep.

_A bright light glared through her eyelids, rousing her from the first stages of dream sleep._

_Gaea, wake up. It's time to get up now._

_She curled tighter, whimpering in protest, and was wakened fully by a stinging slap to the cheek._

Goose twitched, feeling tears on skin that didn't belong to him.

_Darkened hallway, cold floor. The sting of an injection in the side of her neck. A woman's gentle, husky voice._

_Gaea, sweetheart. You know you mustn't ever tell anyone who you really are. You must never leave a trace of your presence._

_Can you do that for Mama?_

A touch on his face. "Shane!"

Goose twisted to his feet, still half-asleep. Niko's cry of pain woke him fully.

"Shane!"

He stared stupidly at her, turned his eyes to the slender wrist he held so cruelly tight in his clenched fist.

With a strangled gasp, he let go and spun away from her, striding toward the bathroom as he retied the belt of his bathrobe. Her voice stopped him in his tracks.

"You can't keep going like this, Shane."

He kept his back to her, heard her approach from behind and hastily scrubbed at the tears with the sleeve of his robe. Why am I crying?

"I don't know what you're talking about, Niko," he said with all the coldness he could muster. Even he wasn't convinced.

She stepped in front of him, her face determined.

"Did you let her scan you?" she asked, searching his face and eyes. He looked away—and was shocked when she reached up to turn his face firmly back toward her. "Did she scan you?" she demanded.

He stared at her.

"Answer me!" Niko shouted, and he nearly jumped. Niko had never before lost her temper with him. " _Did she scan you?_ "

It was the fear he caught in her voice that made him nod slowly. Her shoulders slumped.

"Shane, I think she... Gaea's not very well trained. I think there's a residual link between the two of you. You're having nightmares, aren't you?"

He looked away, filled suddenly with a shame that puzzled him even as it made him want to hide from her scrutiny. Her hand came up again and touched his cheek very gently. She closed her eyes and cocked her head, touching her badge. He felt the touch of her mind then, diffuse, peaceful, and not at all like Gaea's. She sighed and opened her eyes.

"There is a bond there. It's not your fault, Shane," she told him gently. "I can help you. It shouldn't be hard to dissolve the link—"

He stepped back, away from her. "No."

"What?" Niko looked up at him, shocked.

He turned, moved slowly back to the bed and sat, feeling suddenly, terribly weary. "I said no."

"Goose... you can't help her this way," she said. The kindness in her voice pierced him through. "There's no use exhausting yourself. She probably isn't even consciously aware of the link. It only happens when you're asleep, doesn't it?"

"That doesn't matter, Niko. She—I feel responsible, can you understand that? And if this is the only way I can help her, to—to be there and witness what's happening to her, I have to do it. Can you understand?" he repeated.

She stared down at him, stricken.

"Yes," she whispered. "I understand." She closed her eyes for a moment. "But, Goose... two things. If you're going to do this, you're going to need help. Elma—" she raised her voice, and Goose's personal AI bobbed up on the screen of his terminal. Niko turned toward the screen.

"Yes, Niko?" replied Elma in her soft voice.

"Until I tell you otherwise, please monitor Goose's sleep and contact me when he enters dream state."

"Yes, Niko."

Goose uttered a wordless sound of protest, and Niko rounded on him. "You're asking me to watch you self-destruct, Shane! Well, it's your mind and your decision, but I don't have to like it—and I don't have to let you do it on your own. We're a team, the four of us, and we take care of each other."

She turned away.

"Niko... please don't say anything about this to anyone."

Back still to him, she raised one hand to her face.

"Niko?"

"All right, Goose. I won't say anything. But... I said there were two things." She turned back to him, eyes determined.

Goose fought back wariness. This is Niko, he told himself. She's on your side. "Yeah?"

"I want to try using the link to find Gaea."

"You think we can?" He stared at her, trying not to hope.

"I think it's worth a try." She stepped toward him again. At the touch of her fingers on his forehead, Goose was suddenly, terribly conscious of his state of dress. Or rather, undress.

I am sitting on my bed. A woman—no, scratch that, the sexiest woman I've ever met—is touching my face. I am wearing nothing but a bathrobe.

With tremendous effort, Goose kept the blush off his face.

"Uh, Niko, why don't you give me a couple minutes to get dressed."

She blinked, looked down at him, and blushed.

God, that's... No, Gooseman, you ass, don't go there. She's your friend, idiot. Your friend.

"Of course," she said, and turned to retreat to the living room.

He stood hastily. "I'll just use the bathroom. No need to go anywhere. I'll be right back." He grabbed his uniform and took two quick steps into the other room.

He couldn't remember ever having dressed so fast in his life.

 

 

"All right, Goose," Niko said. "You need to concentrate on Gaea."

She's so calm. How does she do it?

Niko laid one gentle hand on his cheek and the other on her badge. "Let's begin, then."

Goose watched, fascinated, as she blinked, her blue-green irises shifting to deep violet before she closed her eyes in concentration. Under the pale skin of her closed eyelids he saw the delicate tracery of veins and the shiver of movement as her eyes twitched in response to some unseen stimulus.

"Concentrate, Shane," she gently rebuked him.

"Sorry," he muttered, and closed his eyes in sheer self-defense, the better to hold an image of Gaea in his mind.

Goose felt nothing at first but the sense of Niko's presence—that touch, deft and sure, which he had felt on other occasions, in other places.

"Ah," she murmured. "I'm getting a sense of—" Her words broke off in a gasp.

Goose felt his head jerk back as if someone had punched him between the eyes, and he saw with blurred vision that Niko had curled over, holding her head in her hands.

Gradually she straightened, the muscles around her eyes tight with pain. "Are you all right, Goose?" she asked quietly.

"Yeah," he answered, gritting his teeth against a pounding headache.

She pressed her fingertips to her temples. "I think," she said carefully, avoiding his eyes, "that we should probably wait until later to try that again."

"Yeah," he repeated.

Niko's eyes closed for a moment. "I understand now why you woke up—that way, Shane," she said softly. "I'm sorry."

She rose and laid one gentle hand on his shoulder before she turned and left the room.

 

 

Niko stepped quickly down the corridor, still holding one hand to her forehead against the throbbing pain that filled her skull. Her mind whirled with emotions and memories that weren't hers: terror, confusion, snatches of thought and sensation.

_Sweetheart, you mustn't ever tell anyone where you came from._

_NO_

_Gaea, my little one... You were made to be special. You're the only one who can do the things you do._

_NO... that's not my mother, not Mira_

Niko shook her head. "That poor girl," she whispered to herself. They're trying to twist all the memories that make her who she is. She paused to let her door slide open and winced as an especially piercing pain stabbed through her head.

_A light, flowery scent, warm arms around her. Just a little peek, sweetheart. No one will ever know..._

_Can you do that for Mama?_

_...Mama?_

Niko's throat ached with sorrow. I'm sorry, Goose...


	12. Chapter 12

Doc's quarters, BETA Mountain

8/3/2098, 0028

 

 

Doc rubbed one hand across his bleary eyes, took a sip from the cup at his elbow, and grimaced.

"Like commissary coffee isn't bad enough," he grumbled, "but now it's cold."

The door hissed open, and reflexively Doc switched jobs so that all that now appeared onscreen was an innocuous debugging session. He glanced at the mirror, carefully placed to afford him a view of anyone who entered, and relaxed.

"How's my favorite redheaded psionic on this fine evening?" he cracked, spinning his chair to face Niko. He noticed with concern that her face seemed shadowed and tired, but he held on to his smile.

"I was just wondering how the audit was going," she said, with a lightness in her voice that fooled neither of them.

He shrugged. "It's going. We've got a lot of people to sift through. I'm leaning in the direction that it's someone you'd naturally expect to be roaming all over the mountain, like cleaning crew or security... but I've been wrong before."

"It would make sense. OPS seems to like keeping a low profile, so it's reasonable that they'd choose someone like that. How about the... other search?"

"Like I said the other day, it's hard to dig up anything on these people."

"Well, what do you have?"

He swiveled back around and toggled his screen back to the search he'd been doing when she entered.

"For this kind of search you have to do an end run—I mean, come at the problem from an angle," he explained. "See, OPS has a budget from the Board of World Leaders, but they don't have to account for it. Amazing what you can get by with if you start sticking 'Planetary Security' tags on everything. So I can't track what they're doing by expenditure reports... exactly."

He touched a few keys and the screen changed. "Okay, here we've got a uniform and linen company that picks up and delivers laundry to a location in Texas I can't pin down exactly because—"

"Someone stuck a 'Planetary Security' label on it?" Niko said, lips curving in an ironic smile.

"Exactly! But... for some reason I'm not going to pretend I'm not grateful for, they didn't hide how _much_ linen was delivered. From the quantity, I worked it out that the base or office they're supplying has about fifty people living there. And this food service company delivers supplies for, I'd calculate, a total of eighty or a hundred people, so they've gotta have day workers too. Mind you, I'm running on a guess that they're probably using space in a government or military installation of some kind because their activities would just sort of blend into the rest of the goings-on there. People probably think they're researchers working on something so boring that only other researchers care about it.

"That said," he continued, "I think it's safe to assume that these deliveries are totally separate from the ones for the actual base or any of the departments that are doing business openly, because otherwise some bored accounts payable clerk might start wondering why he never sees invoices for all that stuff."

He tapped a few more keys and pointed. "Now here, about twelve years back, we have the so-innocently named Office of Materiel Disposal picking up fifty canisters of Supertrooper Juice, everybody's favorite drug of choice—Ow! Geez, touchy! The notation says 'For disposal,' but funny thing—I can't find any correlating record saying that the stuff was ever actually destroyed. And if I trace this office back, looking for the agency Materiel Disposal supports, what do you know—another 'Planetary Security' tag."

Niko frowned. "So we have disappearing Supertrooper Juice and a probably-hidden base. That's not much to go on, Doc."

"Niko, Niko, Niko. Have you so little faith in the Doctor? Observe!" More keystrokes, and now a list of files came up on screen. She scanned the filenames and frowned.

"Doc, that's e-mail! You read someone's e-mail?"

He gave her a pained look.

"Sorry."

He opened one of the files. "This was sent by an administrative worker who's officially assigned to the Planetary Defense Corps. But if you take a look at the expense reports she submits, the mileage doesn't correspond to the distance between her home and any facility that officially belongs to the PDC. Actually, I've got Pathfinder working on correlating the data from these expense reports with the linen company's branch locations and the food service company's warehouses... But I digress." He pointed to a line in the e-mail message.

"If this woman's boss ever saw this message, she'd be joining that guy from Orbital Traffic Control at Pluto Base. Actually, considering where she works she'd be lucky if they gave her a ship to get there with."

Niko peered at the screen. "Honeycakes?" she repeated incredulously.

"Can we get past that, Niko?"

She poked him and kept reading. "'I'm going to be just a teensy-weensy bit late for our date tonight. My boss has me working overtime to get all these stupid requisition forms filled out. What do I care about some special patient? I just want to be with you.'" She snorted. "I can't believe this," she muttered.

"Yeah, I know. Notice the time/date stamp?"

She stared at the line of text. "July 30, 2098, 1926 hours," she read aloud slowly. "Doc..."

"Yeah, I know," he repeated. "That's the day Gaea was taken from BETA. They probably hadn't even grabbed her yet when this dinkhead got started on her requisition forms."

"Excuse me, Niko."

Both of them turned toward the comm terminal, where Elma's icon floated placidly onscreen.

"Goose is—"

"Thank you, Elma," Niko interrupted hastily. "Doc, I have to go." She turned toward the door. Sensing an opening, Doc shot out his hand and grabbed hold of her wrist.

"Goose is what?"

She tugged at his hand, but he refused to let go, frowning at the anxiety in her eyes. "Doc, let me go. I have to go—"

"Niko, tell me what's going on. It's obvious something is bothering both of you."

"I can't tell you! I—if you want to know, you'll have to come along _now_." She pulled again, harder now, and he let go and stood.

"I'm right with you."

 

 

Niko led Doc along the corridor at a brisk walk, almost a trot. He quirked his eyebrows as he confirmed they were heading for Goose's quarters.

"Niko—"

"Not here, Doc. Just wait. Please."

They reached Goose's door, which slid open for them. "Thanks, Elma," Niko murmured.

Doc could hear Goose's voice even from the hallway.

"No... NO!"

Niko strode across the living room and straight into the bedroom.

Doc paused in the bedroom doorway and watched as Niko leaned over Goose's thrashing form, keeping out of arm's reach, and spoke quietly to him.

What the heck is this? Doc thought in bewilderment.

Gradually Goose roused from his nightmare and sat slowly up. "Lights, Elma," he said in a voice hoarsened by fatigue and shouting. Doc winced in the sudden brightness, but the minor discomfort vanished from his mind as Goose's eyes fastened on him. The Supertrooper surged out of bed, heedless of the fact that he wore only trunks, and turned to glare at Niko.

"What's he doing here?" he demanded of her. "You promised—"

"I promised not to say anything," she flared back at him. "I was talking to Doc when Elma found me. I—" she broke off, and Doc realized she didn't want to place the blame on him.

"I wouldn't let her leave until she told me what was going on, my Goose man," Doc said quietly. "She didn't tell me anything. She just said I'd have to come along if I wanted to know. So now I know why you've been looking like death warmed over every day, whenever you finally manage to drag your butt out of bed. How long have you been having nightmares?"

Goose stared at him, jaw clenched, and Niko sighed.

"They're not nightmares, Doc," she said.

"That sure looked like a humdinger of a bad dream to me," he shot back.

"He's not dreaming," Niko answered flatly. "He's—"

"Niko!"

"No, Goose," she told him in a voice that cut off his argument. "This has to stop. How much use are you going to be to the team like this?"

He fell silent, jaw clenched stubbornly, and Niko turned her eyes back to Doc.

"He's linked to Gaea, Doc," she told him. "He's witnessing what's happening to her."

Doc realized his mouth was hanging open, and shut it.

"They're trying to break her," Goose snarled. "No one should be alone with that."

Niko drew breath to argue again, but a sudden, jerky motion from Goose silenced her.

"Niko... I have to do this," he said, and at the sudden pleading in his voice Doc dropped his eyes. "I won't ever be able to look myself in the eye in the mirror again if I abandon her now."

Niko bowed her head in silent understanding, but at the expression on her face Doc looked away.

"Doc?" Goose asked, the question clear in his voice: What are you going to do now?

Doc looked at Goose and then at Niko and held up his hands in surrender. "Hey, I can keep a secret. But I will say this: Zachary's gonna be _pissed._ "

 

 

 

Cafeteria, BETA Mountain

0822

 

 

"Would someone mind explaining to me just _what the hell is going on here_?"

Oops. He's pissed. Doc sighed and set down his fork. The bite of egg he'd been about to eat was still speared on the tines. Guess breakfast is over.

"We've been waiting for you, Captain," Doc said with as much cheer as he could muster. "I've got some data to show you." He pushed forward the bread basket. "Have a muffin. They're pretty good this morning."

Zachary, Doc could see, was not buying it. His blue eyes held about as much warmth at the moment as chunks of quartz. 

"I just heard," Zach said deliberately, "a very interesting rumor."

His eyes are gonna bore a hole through the center of Niko's forehead, Doc thought. Niko's eyes flicked to Goose, and inwardly Doc winced. That's it, he thought, resigned. Game's up. She just broke Rule #1: Never let on there's a secret to be kept.

"Didn't think you listened to rumors," Goose put in, nearly making Doc jump. Three pairs of eyes turned to the tall Supertrooper. Goose only scowled.

"Let's just say this one caught my attention," Zach said, brows drawn together in a thunderous frown. He looked at Niko again. "Why were you leaving Ranger Gooseman's quarters shortly after 0600 hours this morning, Niko?"

Niko turned a most amazing shade of crimson.

She must be hating that red hair about now, Doc mused. There was a silence that seemed to redefine the word.

"I can't tell you," said Niko at last.

Doc watched in apprehensive awe as Zach's brows drew low and his face flushed a dull red. A muscle flexed in their captain's jaw, and when he spoke his voice was far too quiet.

"What do you mean, you can't tell me?"

Niko's chin rose a notch. "I can't tell you," she repeated.

Zachary stared down at her, eyes growing colder. "When I heard the rumor that's circulating around here," he bit out, "it didn't even cross my mind to consider believing it, believing that you were capable of behaving in any way but professionally." Doc saw Niko flush again in anger and hurt and shook his head very slightly.

Not cool, mon Capitan.

"She was helping me."

Zach's eyes jerked to Goose. "What do you mean?" he demanded.

Goose was silent for a moment.

"Gooseman..." Zach's patience was visibly wearing thin.

"She came to my quarters at that hour because I was having a bad dream," Goose said.

Zach looked incredulously at him, face slowly reddening again. Doc tensed, waiting for the explosion.

Zach looked around at his team, and the anger in his eyes suddenly subsided. "I'm obviously not getting the whole story here." He yanked a chair over and sat down. "You want to tell me about it from the beginning?"

 

 

 

Niko's quarters, BETA Mountain

1104

 

 

The door hissed open in front of him while he was still reaching for the buzzer, and Zach faltered for a moment. Get on with it, he told himself, took a few more steps, and paused in the doorway of her quarters. She was bent over her desk, forms and notes spread neatly about her, a stylus held loosely in her hand.

"Niko?"

Niko straightened from her papers and looked at him as if she were standing by a broken window and holding a baseball with his name on it. He winced inwardly.

"I guess you already know why I'm here, don't you?" he said, stepping forward and letting the door slide shut behind him.

She kept looking at him.

"Uh, I'm sorry about what I said earlier," he said. He felt his ears go hot with shame. "I was out of line."

"Apology accepted, Zach," Niko said gently. "What's really on your mind?"

Startled, he blinked and then laughed. "I guess I should be used to that by now, shouldn't I?"

"Probably," she agreed, a ripple of laughter running through her voice. "What is it?"

Zachary groped for words. "Why is Goose so—Niko, he seems obsessed with this girl, with Gaea. Can you tell me what's going on with him?" 

She sat silent for a while, her face thoughtful. "I haven't asked him outright, Zach, but I have the sense that Goose sees Gaea in a somewhat idealized way. He seems to believe very strongly that she shouldn't be a soldier."

He stared at her. "That's it?"

"Zachary..." her voice held a hint of warning.

"I know, you want me to go ask Goose. And you know he won't tell me a damn thing. Niko, I'm his commanding officer. I need to know what's going on."

She sighed. "Sit down, Zachary." Niko watched, eyes dark, as he pulled out a chair, reversed it, and sat down with his arms folded across the back.

"So he thinks she shouldn't be a soldier. There's more to it than that, I assume?"

"Goose never had the chance to be free, Zach, and he may never get the chance. I think he wants that for Gaea. He wants it very badly. And he feels responsible for what's happening to her now because he convinced her to come here."

Zach stared down at his hands, guilt rising inside him, and he muttered, "I can understand that part just fine."

"Can you?" Niko's voice went suddenly cool. He winced again.

"Yes," he said, meeting her eyes squarely. "I can."

 

 

 

Doc's quarters, BETA Mountain

1539

 

 

"Yessss." Doc leaned back in his chair, stretched hugely with a cracking of joints, and laced his hands behind his neck. "Lady and gentletweakers, no applause please, just throw money."

Niko raised her head from her folded arms, rested on the table before her. Printouts lay strewn about, some bearing notations in her flowing, tilted handwriting. "What did you find, Doc?" she asked tiredly.

"I've got the location of this facility narrowed down to a radius of ten miles. My best guess is," and he brought up a map that Niko dimly recognized, "it's somewhere on this Space Navy base, probably one of the more remote buildings."

"But I thought we were dealing with OPS," she protested.

"We are. I'm sure ninety-nine percent of the personnel on that base have no idea this facility is there, and the one percent probably think it's research—"

"I know, Doc," she said wearily. "That only other researchers care about. Now what?"

"Now we just have to find it."

"Doc..." Niko rubbed her eyes. "What are we going to do about it once you do find it, anyway? None of this is admissible evidence. We're hardly going to get a warrant to search the place. We can't even prove Gaea exists."

He looked over his shoulder at her, brown eyes gone suddenly dead serious. "I know," he answered. "But sooner or later, something's gotta break. And when it does... we'll be there."

But Niko, seeing the look on Doc's face, knew that the self-assured tone in the hacker's voice was just as much for his own benefit as for hers.


	13. Chapter 13

BETA Mountain

8/4/2098, 0207

 

 

Goose mumbled in his sleep. On the screen beside the bed, Elma opened her eye.

 

 

In Niko's quarters, the comm system pinged.

"Niko, he's dreaming again," the AI murmured. She sounded worried.

Niko hauled herself out of bed and dropped her head in hands. "This is the third time tonight, Elma," she said, voice slurred with exhaustion. "They're going to break her at this rate." She pulled on a loose jumpsuit and slid her feet into slippers.

Elma was silent, bobbing slightly onscreen as the door slid shut behind Niko.

 

 

Goose thrashed, unable to wake.

_Gaea, Mira's voice whispered softly. You're Mama's precious girl._

_A wail swelled in her throat. The stench of oil and fuel mingled horribly with the faint metallic smell of blood, Mira's blood, her mother's blood, and the sudden emptiness where her mother's familiar presence had always been was a raw wound in her mind._

_He picked her up out of the wreckage of the car, cuddling her close with tender hands._

_Poor little Gaea, he crooned in his deep voice. Mama wanted you to do such bad things... I won't let anyone hurt you, Gaea._

_You're my precious girl._

 

 

As the door to Goose's bedroom slid open, Niko heard the sound of his breathing, harsh and ragged as if he had been running hard. She flinched at the sound that tore itself out of his throat.

"Goose," she said, and crossed to the bed. In the dim light from the window his face was twisted in pain and fury, and even as she watched he bared his teeth.

"No..." he ground out. She closed her eyes in helpless sorrow.

"Goose," she called, opening her eyes again. "Shane, wake up." Wary now, she did not reach down to shake him awake. "Shane!"

His eyes opened, unseeing at first. She bent slightly, still keeping out of reach.

"Shane," she murmured—and caught herself at the tenderness in her voice.

No, she told herself. You can't.

He blinked a few times, finally focused on her.

"Elma woke me," she told him quietly. "It's the third time in twenty-four hours, Shane."

He turned his face away from her. "I know," he answered in a hoarse voice. "They're getting desperate. She hasn't broken, Niko... but I think she's close."

 

 

 

Elsewhere, Earth

8/3, 1311 local date/time

 

 

"Sir, we seem to be making progress."

"I can see that for myself. Step up the dosage by five cc's next time."

"Yes, sir."

 

 

 

Series Five Rangers' office

8/4, 0742

 

 

Zach slid a report across the table to Niko, tapping a notation with his forefinger. "Niko, what did you mean here by 'Not acc.'?"

As Niko examined the page, Zachary kept a surreptitious eye on Gooseman. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen the young ST so grim.

Goose shot him a glance from under his brows. "What?"

"We'll help her, Goose," Zachary said, setting his jaw. "Count on it."

"She may not even be alive to help by the time we get there, Captain," Goose replied. Zach winced inwardly at the bitterness in Goose's voice and saw from the corner of his eye that Niko bit her lip.

"I won't sugarcoat it," Zach said reluctantly. "It doesn't look good. But it's not hopeless yet."

"Even if she's alive, Zach... what are we going to do? They kidnapped her right out from under our noses. What's to stop them from doing it again? We can't protect her."

Zachary shook his head. "I don't know, Gooseman," he said quietly. "But we'll stand with you, whatever happens."

Goose stared across the room, but his eyes were distant.

"What are we going to do now, then?" Niko asked. "It's not an option to leave her where she is. But even if we manage to get her back, we know we can't protect her here."

There was a long silence.

"I've got an idea."

Everyone turned to look at Doc.

 

 

 

 

Commander Walsh's office

8/4, 0903

 

"You wanted to see me, Doctor?"

Doc made his normal sloppy salute—Call a spade a spade, Joe, Walsh told himself, it's execrable—and held out a datachip. "I've got our suspect pool narrowed down to about twenty people," he explained. "I know it's still a lot of folks to keep an eye on, but it's better than the number we started with—more than 250. I've encrypted it with a key that Belva generated for me just this morning."

"Well done, Doc," Walsh replied, taking the chip and slotting it into the reader. "I'll have her monitor their activities from now on."

"Thanks, Commander."

Walsh eyed the dark circles under his eyes. "In the meantime, Doctor, take the rest of the morning off. That's an order. Now get out of my office and get a few hours of sleep."

"Yes, sir!" Hartford said cheerfully, saluted, and turned on his heel.

Watching the door slide shut behind him, Walsh said, "Belva."

"Yes, sir?"

"Begin monitoring the names on that list. —As for Hartford, lock his home and work terminals off the net, and tell those programs of his that I'll erase them myself if they hack him a back door before noon."

"Yes, sir," Belva said, a ripple of amusement running through her voice.

"And lock out that fake ID of his. Who does he think he's fooling?"

"Yes, sir," she repeated, her icon shaking with contained mirth.

"And put me down for ten credits in the betting pool."

"What time, sir?"

He snorted and eyed the clock. "He'll be back on the net by 0945, and only because he'll stop to make coffee first. And you can tell Dorian that if he 'accidentally' leaves an opening for Doc again to try winning the pool, I'll bust him back down to maintenance AI down in the auxiliary vehicle bay and give Alberta his job."

And anyone who still thinks AIs don't have a sense of humor, he thought, watching Belva's silent laughter, needs his head examined! 

 

 

 

BETA Mountain

8/4, 1219

 

 

"Sir, I have news," the caller said softly.

"You'd better, considering where you are." The man at the other end tapped his fingers on the table. The hiss of a breather filled the momentary pause.

"Walsh has pulled Gooseman off the case, said he's too close to it. He's being sent off-planet sometime this afternoon or possibly tomorrow morning, looks like to Ozark." The caller tensed as footsteps went by the storage locker door.

"I see. Interesting. And?"

"That's all, sir."

"Don't call here again from there. You know the procedure."

"Yes, s—" The screen went dark.

The caller wiped down the terminal and silently left the room.

 

 

 

Doc's quarters

8/4/2098, 1413

 

 

"This just keeps getting better."

Niko lifted her head from Doc's sofa, where she'd curled up in exhaustion after the words refused to stop swimming in front of her eyes. "Mm?"

"I'm finding hints of OPS fingers in all kinds of pies. Building the better esper, but we knew that, and it looks like they might be involved in biowarfare research to boot."

She groaned.

"Oh... Niko... Have you ever heard the word 'Skoll' or 'Skollii' before?"

She frowned, sitting up. "It sounds vaguely familiar. Why?"

"I keep running into it, but I can't seem to pin down what it is. These documents are all just vague enough to be really annoying at times. I try looking it up and I get hits on everything from people's names to Norse mythology."

"Norse—of course." Niko unclipped her handheld and entered the term. "Idiot," she muttered to herself, and sent a beam to Doc.

Doc raised his eyebrows and gave his teammate a meaningful look, focusing on the dark circles under her eyes. "You're only looking dead tired, girl," he chided her. "I'm kind of surprised you still remembered how to find my apartment. What is it?" He accepted her beam and scanned the screen of his terminal.

"Skoll is a figure from Norse myth," Niko explained, "a wolf who chases the sun. The myth says that at Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods—the end of the world, basically—Skoll will finally catch up with the sun and swallow it."

Doc studied the text on the miniscreen. "What's with the _i_ 's stuck on the end?"

"It's a Latin suffix that denotes people. I guess you could translate the whole word as 'People of Skoll.'"

"Why stick a Latin ending on a name out of Norse myth?"

Niko's mouth quirked. "Arrogance?"

"That's our boy Latham to a T." Doc snickered, then frowned. "But what's Norse mythology about the end of the world got to do with OPS?"

Niko stared down at the handheld. At her expression, a jittery tightness started up in the pit of Doc's stomach.

"I don't know," she answered slowly, "but I feel strongly that it's not good for us."

 

 

Elsewhere

8/4/2098, 0933 local time

 

 

"Good morning, Gaea. You're doing very well, you know."

"Yes, sir."

"Would you like to help me? It's a little thing, I promise."

"...Yes, sir."

He leaned forward and pressed a button on the console before him. The monitor on the wall came to life to reveal a man sitting at a desk. He was middle-aged, with fading blond hair and a ruddy face.

"Gaea, my dear, I'm very concerned about Mr. Dimar here. When he came to work with us he signed a contract of nondisclosure. Standard procedure for people in our line of work. I signed one myself."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, we think he's broken his contract. In fact, we think he's selling information, classified information, to agents of the Queen of the Crown. She's the greatest threat Earth faces, you know. She'd depopulate the planet, enslave the entire race, to feed her need for psychocrystals."

"Yes, sir."

"I need your help, Gaea. I'm sure you can see that if our suspicions are correct, Mr. Dimar poses a grave threat to every man, woman, and child on our planet. You can see that, can't you, my dear?"

"Yes, sir."

"It's such a little thing, Gaea. I just need you to scan him in a moment. Mr. Burke will be entering his office—ah, good, there he is." On the monitor a brown-haired main knocked on the open door, entered, and struck up a conversation with the man at the desk. "Mr. Burke will direct the conversation to make your job easier, child. Please begin."

They watched in silence as the two men chatted.

"He's not selling information to the Queen, sir. He's selling it to BETA."

"Very good, Gaea. It's always good to know one's people, isn't it? Well, you see, we'll simply have to terminate his employment and initiate a lawsuit instead of having him arrested. This is much easier for all of us. Thank you, my dear, for saving everyone a great deal of trouble."

"Yes, sir."

 

 

"Ah, Mr. Dimar. Please, sit down."

"Thank you, sir. May I ask what this is about?"

"Ever to the point, our Mr. Dimar. All right. I'm sorry to tell you that we no longer have need of your services, effective immediately. You'll receive our usual generous severance package, of course."

"...I see. I don't suppose I can change your mind, sir? I've enjoyed working here, you know. It's not every day a man gets the chance to work under the best mind in his field."

"Thank you, Mr. Dimar. No, I'm afraid my decision is final. I've already had my secretary prepare all the necessary paperwork. Please leave your badge and your keycard on the table—thank you. If you'll just sign here?" With a flick of his fingers he indicated the pen that lay on the desk before Dimar. 

Dimar's face reddened further with suppressed anger. "I don't mind saying I'm very disappointed, Dr. Latham. I don't think I deserve this. But it's your decision, I guess. You're the head of the project, not me." He took up the pen and signed his name.

"Very good, Mr. Dimar. Thank you. Would you be so good as to take the second copy of that? Excellent. Mr. Burke here will escort you out."

Dimar rose.

"Ah, one more thing..." The hum of the motorized chair seemed very loud in the bare meeting room. Latham rounded the end of the conference table as Dimar turned back toward him.

"Yes, sir?"

"I'm really very disappointed in you, Mr. Dimar. You signed the NDA just the same as the rest of us."

Dimar's ruddy skin paled slightly. A sweat broke out on his forehead. "I... don't know what you mean, sir." He swayed where he stood but caught himself.

"Ah, taking effect already, is it?" Latham smiled thinly as Dimar's eyes rolled up in his head and he fell heavily to the floor. He watched dispassionately as Dimar's limbs trembled. "Be sure my secretary sends a letter of condolence to his wife. Obviously the news of his dismissal was too much for him. It appears that he's had a stroke." He touched a button on the arm of his wheelchair and spoke. "Dr. Ngumi, you may come to take your readings now. The experiment is concluded."

The brown-haired man standing by the door took a step forward, but Latham shook his head.

"No, Mr. Burke, give the nanites time to break down first. I can't have my loyal troops dropping dead on me, can I?"

At Latham's feet Dimar twitched a few more times and was still.

 

 

"Careful with that. It's going back to the wife."

The medical tech snorted. "Yeah, whatever." She grabbed the sheet and began to pull it over the dead man's face.

Her hand never completed the motion.

Burke jumped as Gaea seemingly appeared from nowhere, grabbed the tech's wrist in her hand, and stared down at the corpse's face. "Now just wait a—" he began.

"Hey, let go of me," the tech said in annoyance. Gaea's head snapped around, and she gazed unblinkingly into the other woman's face.

The tech's eyes rolled back and she dropped bonelessly. Her head made a solid thud as it hit the floor.

Burke swore and went for his gun. Gaea's head jerked around again. Her eyes pinned him where he stood.

"Why is he dead?" she demanded, her voice hoarse and cracked.

He made no answer aloud, only twitched in her mind's grasp, but slowly she bowed her head.

"I should have known," she whispered. Her face crumpled.

Burke slammed against the wall and slid limply to the floor. His gun skittered away.

"I'm sorry," Gaea whispered to the dead man, and gently she covered his face. Legs unsteady, she set off down the corridor.

From her hiding place in a doorway, the little brown-haired girl smiled.

 

 

The building shook faintly. Latham looked up from his desk, annoyance spreading across his face. His eyes flicked to a monitor on the wall, and his lips thinned in irritation. He pressed a button on his commlink. His secretary's face appeared on the screen.

"Selma, what is that?" he snapped. "We're not having an earthquake, so what is causing these tremors?"

"Sir, I don't know, sir," she answered, looking nervously about her as another tremor, stronger this time, shook the ground beneath them.

"Well, find out, please. At once." He closed the connection.

Moments later his commlink lit up with a priority message.

"Yes?" he barked.

"Sir!" A frantic voice emerged from the speaker. "It's Gaea, sir! She's gone berserk! Seven of us are down already!"

"Use gas, fool. But take her down—and without injuring her!"

"Sir—"

"She is worth more than you are! Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, sir!"

 

 

Latham stared through the one-way glass at the unconscious form on the table. His head turned to the other man in the room.

"She saw Dimar's body, did she? Careless of Burke."

The other man shrugged. "Burke has a problem with that," he answered coolly. "He'll learn. Maybe the skull fracture will help remind him."

"I have half a mind to terminate him for this. He's undone days of work. How's Menda?"

"Fine. She'll have a nasty headache from her head hitting the floor, but no permanent damage."

"Good," Latham said, his gaze never leaving Gaea.

"Sir?" A child's high voice sounded from just behind Latham.

He spun his chair to face the diminutive girl who stood there, dark eyes grave and calm.

"Minako," he said coolly. "You shouldn't be here."

"I had to tell you, sir," she said softly. "It wasn't Mr. Burke's fault, sir. She hid from him. We were trying to get to her when she found them, Mr. Burke and Dr. Menda, in the hallway."

Latham studied his third oldest child and then smiled thinly.

"Good girl, Minako," he told her. "You've probably saved Mr. Burke's life, you know."

"He is always kind to us," she answered, and turned to go.

Latham watched her leave, eyes calculating. He had almost forgotten the other man's presence when a chuckle recalled it to him.

"Now that was interesting. —What are you going to do about her, sir?" Hunter asked, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in Gaea's direction. "You know the probabilities. The Rangers' hacker is almost certainly getting close to identifying our location; with this setback it's going to take weeks of training to get her back to where she was this morning. And Walsh is starting to turn eyes on us we'd rather not have looking our way. You know what our best option is, sir, much as I hate to say it."

Latham was silent for a long time as he gazed at Gaea's face through the glass.

"She was the first, you know," he said, regret clear in his voice. "Damn Mira!"

"Sir?"

"Go ahead, Mr. Hunter. Just be sure you have the remains disposed of. There are to be no traces, none whatsoever. The fusion reactor should take care of it."

"Yes, sir."

 

 

Hunter kept his eyes on Gaea's still form as two technicians in biohazard suits hooked the gas canisters to the ventilation system of the little room where she lay.

"Sir?" One of them approached him. "We're ready."

"Fine, you can start whenever you like. You've got the injection handy?"

"Yes, Mr. Hunter. We'll administer it once the Compound 29 clears, just to be sure."

"Good. Go ahead." The technician who'd spoken signaled, and his teammate twisted the nozzles to open them. No sound came through the wall, but Hunter imagined he could hear the hissing of the nerve gas as it filtered slowly into the room. Moments passed as he and the two technicians stood watching.

Gaea's eyes snapped open.

Hunter's hand was already heading for his pocket as Gaea rolled off the exam table and onto her feet. She steadied herself with one hand on the edge of the table and stared at the glass. His heart seemed to jump in his chest, and he thought uneasily, It feels as if she's staring right at me... through one-way glass.

His hand emerged from his pocket. The glass began to bulge toward him.

Hunter felt as though time had slowed; he let his knees bend to drop him below the level of the table before him. As his knees hit the floor the glass shattered and he engaged his experimental personal force field with the control unit he held.

He knelt there, sheltered by the table and by his force field from the effects of the blast, as the technicians fell to the floor, their hazard suits shredded, bleeding from hundreds of cuts. And then the Compound 29 reached them, and he crouched unmoving and watched them die.

He had his eyes on Avani, the closer of the two, when Gaea appeared beside him. As he stumbled to his feet, he met her eyes—and she had him.

He carried the vision of her maddened green eyes down with him into darkness.


	14. Chapter 14

BETA Mountain

8/4, 2316

 

 

"Zach? Come on, Captain, wake up. We need you."

"Nn... Yeah, I'm up. What've you got, Doc? Found something on them finally?"

"Maybe. I think you better get up here."

 

 

Zachary burst into Doc's quarters to find his three teammates clustered around Doc's comm station. They opened their circle silently as he trotted over.

"What's—" Doc waved him to silence and raised the volume. Zachary cocked his head.

Comm traffic... from a Space Navy base in Texas?

Voices issued crisp orders as Zachary listened.

"An emergency situation at their hazardous materials dump?" he asked Doc quietly. "Why—"

"That's the facility where they've got Gaea," Goose cut in, voice flat.

Zach stared at him. "Facility?" he echoed skeptically. "It's a bunker full of chemicals."

"It's a base," said Doc. "It fits, Zach. All the facts I've presented to you back me up. And now this..."

Zach listened again. An explosion. They're evacuating part of the base, moving everyone to the other side of the facility... He shook his head. "I don't know, Doc. It could be the real thing."

"Or it could be Gaea," Doc said. "Trust me on this one, Zach. I've got a feeling."

"All right, it's Gaea," Zach said, throwing up his hands. "Are we a go, then?"

"Yep," answered Doc.

Goose stood. "See you later." His eyes swept over them, tight-focused, penetrating, and then he turned and strode out the door without looking back.

 

 

 

Series Five Rangers' office

8/5, 0158

 

 

Zach folded his arms again and shifted his weight slightly. Niko shot him an ironic look.

"Restless, Zachary?"

He frowned at her before tipping one corner of his mouth in a self-mocking smile. "Once the flag goes up I'd rather move than wait, I guess. I envy Goose."

Pathfinder's piping voice emerged suddenly from the comm system speakers. "Hey, Docko! We've been monitoring all channels like you said, and get a load of what we found!"

A rather scratchy image appeared on the screen. Zach saw people, vehicles, and a cluster of low buildings. One of those buildings, a bunker surrounded by walls, trailed smoke from a gaping hole in the roof. "That's the Space Navy base," Zach said incredulously. "Where are you getting this—No," he interrupted himself, "on second thought, I don't want to know."

From somewhere behind the warehouse, an aircraft rose vertically and circled before the pilot hit the jets and took off. "Pathfinder, what's the heading on that one?" Doc asked.

"Heading north, Boss."

Zach was staring at it. "That's a Peregrine," he said. Doc blinked at him.

"Yeah? So? It's just a troop carrier, standard in the Space Navy."

Zach turned his eyes away from the screen to look over at Doc. "So why are Space Navy troops lighting out for someplace north during a crisis at a Space Navy base?"

Doc looked back at the screen, but the craft had already left pickup range. "I don't know," he answered slowly. A moment later a second aircraft appeared, lifting off from the same location as the first, and took off in very nearly the opposite direction. Zach started.

"That's a Mongoose," he said in surprise. "And with that heading it's not bound for the other side of the base."

"They're headed into the city, Captain," Niko said.

"Yeah," Doc added. "And I'll give you one guess why an assault copter is headed into a major metropolitan area from the base where they had Gaea. They've headed off the base, it's connected to an offworld case we're working on—this just hit our jurisdiction, Zach, and our next move is up to you."

Zachary looked at both of them, hesitated—and nodded sharply. "Let's go," he said.

Doc saluted with more enthusiasm than finesse, hastily locked down his terminal, and then turned on his heel and sprinted for the door mere steps behind Niko. "To the Batmobile, Robin!" he yelled after her retreating back.

Zach rolled his eyes and took off after them.

 

 

 

On board _Ranger One_

1621 Central Daylight Time

 

 

"Zachary?"

Zach started and looked over at Niko, sitting in the pilot's seat.

"Sorry," he answered sheepishly. "Guess I was thinking."

She smiled. "Thinking's fine. We need to let Goose know where to meet us, though."

"Yeah." Zachary opened a comm link to the Nav Bay. "Doc, are you ready with that encryption key?"

Doc appeared on the comm screen, grinning. "I'm one step ahead of you, mon Capitan. I've got the message ready to go already. Gave Elma her half of the key hours ago, of course. But we could re-record it if you want to give the order yourself."

"Not needed," Zach replied. "Go ahead and send it, Doc. Good work."

"Aye aye, Cap'n." Doc closed the link, and Zach looked over at Niko with quirked brows.

"Where does he come up with those lines?"

Niko only laughed.

 

 

 

Aboard Ranger P-38, Near Earth space lanes, inbound

1621 Central Daylight Time

 

 

Elma's voice broke into the quiet of Goose's cockpit. "Receiving encoded tightbeam transmission, Goose," she said.

"Decrypt and play record, please, Elma."

"Just a moment, please."

There was a pause. Doc's face appeared on Goose's screen. "My Goose man!" he said cheerfully. "Our little friend has beat feet for someplace warm. Meet up with us in New Corpus Christi, and be sure to bring your flameproof pajamas. We'll be keeping an ear out for trouble of the black O variety, but you've got the secure channel frequency if we end up needing your personal radar to finish the job."

Doc's expression went sober.

"Stay cool, my friend. We want to do the nailing, not get nailed, remember? And I've always been a sucker for happy endings. Out."

"Switching registry data now, Goose," Elma informed him.

He grinned and patted the top of the instrument board. "That's my girl, Elma."

"Vima," she corrected him primly. "Shall I plot a course for New Corpus Christi, Ranger Hellman?"

"Yeah, 'Vima,'" he said with a chuckle. "And while you're at it you can figure out how we're gonna get back at Doc for sticking me with a name like that."

 

 

 

New Corpus Christi, Texas, Earth

1705

 

 

Gaea flinched as a heavy assault copter roared over the city somewhere to the east of her. She choked back a whimper. Shut up, she told herself savagely. You can't screw up this time. No one's going to help you.

_Never leave a trace..._

Shut up! She screamed inwardly, and the voice went still. She half-trotted down a street in New Corpus Christi's business district. Evening commuters hurried along the sidewalks all around her, dressed in elegant suits or crisp uniforms in the fading heat of the day. In all the bustle it wasn't hard to keep people from noticing her, even dressed as she was in patient's tunic and loose trousers from the training base. She could feel every seam in the sun-warmed pavement through her thin slippers.

I need to find different clothes... Don't I? Where should I go? Maybe I should have stayed... No!

Nearby a stand offered packaged meals. At the smells her stomach growled, reminding her she hadn't eaten enough that day for the level of energy she'd been using. She gravitated toward the stand, careful not to attract the attention of the proprietor. Her stomach growled again.

She waited until a customer approached the stand and spoke to the proprietor before she sidled to the counter. As casually as if she were about to buy, she picked up three meals and, without even stopping to see what she'd gotten, turned and strolled away.

In her head a man's voice said coolly, _Good girl_. She bit her lip and walked on.

 

 

 

New Corpus Christi

1721

 

 

Gaea paused, staring across the busy street before her. A small park waited there, relatively unpopulated during the busy commute hours. She caught sight of a low fountain and a bench shadowed by trees, and clutched her dinner to her chest.

Taking advantage of a changing light, she darted across the street.

The bench was unoccupied. She sank down on it and set two of the meals down against her leg. She couldn't remember having been so hungry since—

When? Maggie? Did I know someone named Maggie? But I never lived on the street—did I?

Yes—no—

It took all the strength of her shaking fingers to tear open the seal.

 

 

The sound of a copter engine roared overhead, and Gaea nearly dropped the half-empty package containing her third meal.

That's the same copter as before. They're looking for me. I've got to hide...

She glanced fearfully up, relaxing only slightly as she realized the foliage of the tree overhead concealed her from above. Quickly she stuffed the rest of the food into her mouth. The package followed the first two into the trash bin nearby.

I've got to hide... Where?

Gaea wrapped her arms around herself and sat, shaking in fear and confusion.

 

 

On board _Ranger One_ , New Corpus Christi airport

1737

 

 

Zach stretched and looked across the cockpit at Niko.

"Doc's still monitoring the comm traffic?" he asked.

"Yes." She rose. "In fact, I think I may go join him if you don't mind."

He smiled. "Beats sitting in here. I think I'll go back to scanning through the legal codes, not that we're likely to be bringing a case against OPS anytime soon."

"Knowledge is never a waste," Niko replied with an air of someone quoting.

"Who said that?"

She smiled down at him and turned. "Ariel, of course," she said over her shoulder and stepped through the hatch into the Nav Bay.

"Of course," Zachary said dryly in GV's general direction, and he chuckled and picked up his datapad.

 

 

 

7th and Peel Streets, New Corpus Christi

1811

 

 

"Hey, birdie, nice outfit."

Gaea's head jerked up. A young man, dark-haired and unshaven, leaned against the back of the bench where she sat. Behind him she saw a second youth, taller, blond, and as scruffily dressed as his friend.

"You going for that mental institution chic or somethin'?" he asked with a smirk. "I like the slipper look, too."

She hunched her shoulders and stared down at her lap. "Go away, please," she mumbled.

"She don't like us, Aller," the dark young man said to his friend in mock dismay.

"Looks like not, Fitz," the blond answered cheerfully. "Why'n't you like us, birdie?"

"Leave me alone. Please, just go away."

Fitz loomed over her. "Why? Why don'tcha come with us? We can show you a good time, maybe find you something nicer to wear..." He ran the side of his hand softly down her cheek with another smirk.

At his touch Gaea sprang to her feet and away from him, eyes huge and terrified. "Go away!" she wailed, and began to cast about her for a new place to hide.

Fitz frowned. "Hey, birdie, what's your problem?" he demanded irritably. "I ain't hurtin' ya or nothin'." He took two swift steps forward and put one hand on her shoulder, just at the base of her neck.

Gaea shrieked, put her hands over her face, struck blindly, and felt her mind connect with his. She heard him grunt and collapse to the pavement at her feet.

From somewhere not too far away she heard the sound of the copter again.

"Holy shit! Fitz!"

Fitz groaned. She wrapped her arms around herself and stared down at the two, shivering. Aller looked up at her from where he squatted at his friend's side.

"What the hell did you do, woman! His nose's bleedin'!" He stood, glaring at her, mixed anger and fear in his eyes.

She backed up, still staring down at Fitz' face. He lay on the pavement, blood dripping from his nose. From a nearby sidewalk a woman yelled shrilly, "Oh my God! He's bleeding!"

_Never leave a trace of your presence..._

_Can you do that for Mama?_

Gaea screamed.

As Aller fell to his knees, she turned and fled.

 

 

 

New Corpus Christi

1812

 

 

Goose twitched in the seat of his rental car, losing a little speed.

"Sir, your heart rate has changed," the onboard AI informed him. "Do you require assistance?"

"No," he muttered. "No." His eyes moved, scanning the intersection ahead. The portable scanner in the seat beside him fed a constant stream of radio chatter into the audio clip on his right ear.

Gaea... where are you?

Around him the traffic flowed on.


	15. Chapter 15

New Corpus Christi

8/4/2098, 1817

 

 

Officer Edra Crowley, NCCPD, growled, "I am _not_ having a good day!"

Officer Judah Merrin shook his head. "It wasn't that bad, Edra. He didn't actually break through your armor, now, did he?"

"He _bit_ me," she said through her teeth to her partner. "And I _know_ he was foaming at the mouth."

Merrin rolled his eyes. "Yeah, Edra, whatever. He was just another drug addict."

From the corner of her eye she glowered at him. "I love my fucking job," she muttered. "I love my fucking job."

The radio crackled. "All units, all units. We have a 241 reported at Renner Park, 7th and Peel. Two civilians reported injured, ambulance en route. Please respond."

Merrin grabbed the mike and pressed the Call button. "This is unit 704. We're three blocks over. Responding." He replaced the mike, hit the lights and glanced over at Crowley. She scowled and pulled into the left lane to turn.

"Fuck. Parahuman trouble," she grumbled. "My day is now complete. Like that damn black copter overflying the whole damn city isn't bad enough."

"Yeah," Merrin answered mischievously. "What next? Fire? Explos—"

"God damn it, Judah!"

He laughed. "You are so superstitious, woman. What the heck is up with that?"

She just glared.

"We're not—" 

"When the shit hits the fan," she said, still glaring, "just remember you're the one who said it."

 

 

 

Greenwood Drive, New Corpus Christi

1817

 

 

In his rental car Goose made an abrupt lane change, leaving a chorus of honking horns in his wake.

"Sir," the onboard AI said. "Sir, I am required to remind you that unsafe driving practices violate the terms of your rental contract."

"Shut the hell up," Goose snarled, "and plot me the fastest possible route to 7th and Peel."

"Sir—"

"Don't make me mad."

 

 

 

On board _Ranger One_ , New Corpus Christi airport

1817

 

"Oh, great." In the Nav Bay, Doc sat up straighter in his seat, hand going to the earbug he wore. Niko looked up from monitoring Space Navy frequencies to see him grimace. "This is not happening," he groaned. "I'm gonna close my eyes and click my heels together three times, and when I open my eyes I'm going to be standing in my bathroom, brushing my teeth—"

"What is it, Doc?" Niko asked

"It's ugly, is what. New Corpus Christi PD Dispatch just sent out a patrol car on a 241, which according to their datafiles is Assault, Parahuman related."

Niko stared at him in dismay.

"And if I'm monitoring the police frequencies, you can bet our friends in the Mongoose will be too."

Niko opened a connection to the bridge. "Zach, we're going to need clearance for takeoff as soon as we can get it." She rose. "Doc, I'll be up front."

"Gotcha, lady."

The hatch hissed shut behind her as the engines began to cycle up.

 

 

 

7th and Peel Streets

1819

 

 

Crowley and Merrin pulled up the curb at Renner Park. An ambulance sat on the sidewalk, red lights flashing, and nearby a pair of medics were giving first aid to a couple of scruffy-looking young men. Crowley set the brakes and studied the scene.

"Nice coupla street rats," she said. Merrin grinned at her and climbed out. She followed him across the pavement.

The two young men looked up with some apprehension as the officers approached. Crowley noted automatically: Brown/brown, 19 to 22, about six-two and 160, unshaven, blue plaid, jeans, brown work boots. Blond/blue, 19 to 22, about five eleven and 155, unshaven, blue denim, jeans, black combat boots.

"I'm Officer Merrin, and this is my partner, Officer Crowley," Merrin said to the group at large before bending a calm grey gaze on the dark-haired young man. "What are your names, and what happened here?"

The brown-haired man winced as the paramed probed his skull. "Ow, lady! I hit that when I fell down, okay?"

The blond man spoke up. "I'm Aller and this is Fitz. We went up to this freaky-looking birdie, all dressed in some institutional-looking uniform thing, and we offered to show her around, and next thing I know Fitz is kissing pavement with his nose bleeding. I yelled at her and wham! I woke up staring at the side of that trash can, man."

Merrin traded a glance with Crowley. "How do you think you came to lose consciousness, Mr. ...Aller?" he asked.

"Aller Kirkus, man. I dunno, that freaked-out woman did something. She was off her beam in a big way, if you know what I mean. She was shaking and screaming and yelling at us to leave her alone. But we weren't doing nothing, man, just offering to show her a nice time."

"She seemed really scared," Fitz said. "I was kinda sorry for her. Maybe she was tripped out on something."

Merrin frowned. "What do you mean by 'did something'? Did she strike you?"

Fitz and Aller both shook their heads. "That's the freaky thing, man," said Aller. "She didn't lay a finger on either one of us."

From across 7th Street, laser fire sounded.

 

 

 

On board _Ranger One_ , New Corpus Christi Airport

1819

 

Zach stared at the Air Traffic Control officer. "You put us in a _queue_? We're law enforcement officers on a case!"

"Sorry, sir," the young woman chirped. "We're really backed u—" She broke off and blinked as Niko leaned into pickup range, eyes glittering.

"We're taking off," Niko said icily. "You can clear us a corridor now or we can clear it ourselves. Do you understand?"

"But, but ma'am—"

Niko cut the connection and opened a hailing channel. Zachary glanced at her in amusement. "Wasn't that a bit harsh?" he asked mildly.

She shot him an exasperated look, sat back in her seat and spoke into the mike. "Attention all pilots, ground crew, traffic controllers! This is Galaxy Ranger vessel _Ranger One_ , priority code 77006. Clear the area for liftoff at once! I repeat, clear for liftoff in ten, nine—"

Zach hastily strapped in, noting with amusement the consternation Niko was stirring up over the general channel.

Eight seconds later, _Ranger One_ leaped free of the tarmac.

 

7th and Peel Streets

1820

 

Crowley and Merrin turned and dashed toward the laser fire.

"That's heavy laser assault rifle fire. What d'ya wanna bet their birdie and that gunfire are connected?" Crowley demanded between breaths, veering around a car stopped for the light. From somewhere off to their left a horn beeped once. 

"No bets," Merrin answered. Into his radio he snapped, "This is 80225. Shots fired, 7th and Peel, requesting 11-99!" 

Crowley frowned as a sound she'd been hearing subconsciously since they arrived at Renner Park filtered through the low rumble of traffic and caught her attention.

"Is that that damn copter again?" She craned her neck to hunt for it as they reached the southeast corner of 7th and Peel. She nearly tripped on the curb as more laser fire sounded.

"Walkway between TelCorp 1 and 2," Merrin said, indicating the two huge office buildings before them with a wave of his arm. They were turning to run south down 7th when the black copter rose from behind the southern building, men clad in black armor braced in its open hatches.

"Holy shit!" Crowley barked, skidding to a halt to stare opened-mouthed. The copter nosed down and made a run over the space between the TelCorp buildings. The men inside rained laser fire down on the walkway. From behind them Crowley heard the squeal of brakes and the sound of a collision, followed shortly by another, then a third. She turned, wincing, to see a four-car pileup that added a fifth as she watched.

"That copter came up from the parking lot," Merrin said from behind her. He sounded as stunned as Crowley felt.

"Jesus," she swore. "What the hell are those goons doing in our town, Judah? This isn't fuckin' Tortuna City!" She snatched the radio off her shoulder and hit the Call button. "Dispatch, this is 80194. We got a fuckin' airborne assault going here, plus a five-car 11-83, 7th and Peel. Immediate civilian evac required, 11-99!"

Motion caught her eye and she glanced south down 7th. "Damn! There's more of 'em over there! Come on!"

She drew her gun and broke into a sprint, Merrin at her heels. "Hey! YOU! New Corpus Christi PD! Drop your weapons and put your hands where I can see them!"

 

 

 

8th and Alder Streets

1820

  

Goose sprinted down 8th Street, heading for Peel and the back end of the TelCorp plaza. From a block and a half away laser fire resounded in his ears—and then it stopped.

Hang on, girl, just hang on...

 

 

TelCorp 2, New Corpus Christi, Texas, Earth

1820

 

The firing had stopped. Faintly Gaea heard shouting from the direction of the street. That's not in the park, she decided. Her head hurt and she dashed away the tears with a grimy, impatient hand.

From the parking lot behind the building she heard the copter settle to the ground, its fans lowering to an idle. All around her were minds—intent, curious, afraid... hunting. Hunting her.

The recessed doorway where she huddled had barely sheltered her from the copter's strafing run. She looked again at her side where the laser had caught her. The skin visible through the hole burned in her flimsy tunic was still pink and tender, but the pain had mostly stopped. She turned back to the door lock and tried again to open it, but her head hurt so much and she couldn't focus.

I'm so tired. Why can't they just leave me alone?

_You've been very bad, Gaea..._

She cowered in her too-small refuge, stifling the wail that rose in her throat.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry...

 

 

 

7th and Peel Streets

1821 

 

"Planetary _what_?"

"You heard me, officer," the leader said coldly. "This is a matter of planetary security. Stand down. We will handle it from here." The badge in his hand gleamed coldly. It bore no rank or agency name, only a number.

"My _ass_ ," Crowley started, but lapsed into silence at Merrin's hand on her shoulder.

"This is going straight to our chief," he said coldly to the man. "You just parked a Mongoose in the main parking lot of TelCorp, you're firing heavy assault laser rifles inside city limits, and I've never seen that before," and he indicated the badge with a straight-pointing finger that still managed somehow to convey disgust. "You can squeal planetary security all day, but this is still our jurisdiction. You got it?"

The man smiled. Crowley thought of barracudas. "Whatever makes you feel better, officer," he answered. "We won't take up any more of your time now."

Crowley heard a vehicle squeal to a halt behind them. As the sound of a door slamming open resounded off TelCorp 1, the man's eyes flicked to something behind her. In the distance a siren wailed into life.

"If you really want to be useful," the man continued, "you can keep those newshounds off our backs."

Another set of brakes screeched. The man smiled again, and a red haze descended over Crowley's vision.

 

 

7th and Peel Streets

1823

  

" _No_ , you stupid asshole, the people _don't_ have a right to know! And you _don't_ have a right to get ventilated by some moron with a heavy assault rifle on _my_ shift, _get it_?" Crowley shoved her face a little closer to the reporter's. The man backed off hastily. She pushed the crowd-control pylon next to her a bit further toward the curb and ground her teeth as an overeager camerawoman jostled it. A steady trickle of evacuees from the TelCorp complex—employees working late, cleaning crews, security officers—flowed down the sidewalk toward Alder.

From the intersection she caught a glimpse of an extremely harried Dara Sterling refereeing among the auto-accident victims while trying to keep traffic moving off 7th Street. Moments later barriers went up at Alder and at Peel, closing the street. Distantly she heard horns blare, and someone on Peel with more lung power than brains bellowed profanely as he found himself unable to make a right onto 7th. Just wait 'til we close Peel between 6th and 10th, she thought with an unpleasant smile.

"This is all we need. We need more reinforcements, Judah. No way are we gonna be able to keep a lid on this mess and keep the newshounds out of the fire without more cops."

"I'm working on it, Edra," he answered, almost snapping. "We got a shift change at Dispatch and I'm stuck repeating myself here."

She growled. "Why the hell don't those people read their goddamn memos?"

 

 

 

774 Peel Street

1823

 

Goose stared up at the building in front of him. Two floors higher than TelCorp 2, it offered the perfect route to TelCorp 2's roof.

He leaped for the fire escape ladder.

 

 

 

On board _Ranger One_ , New Corpus Christi airspace

1824

 

"Zach!" Doc appeared on the screen, his face tense. "Bad news, Captain."

"Have you picked up more video from the base?"

"...No. I'm switching your screen to a Tri-D feed."

Silence.

"Oh, shit."

Niko raised an eyebrow at the profanity and touched a few switches. _Ranger One_ shuddered as they picked up speed.

Just ahead, the high-rise buildings of downtown New Corpus Christi gleamed in the late-afternoon sun.


	16. Chapter 16

7th and Peel Streets

8/4/2098, 1829 

 

"Any questions?"

The six NCCPD officers who'd arrived as backup shook their heads. Crowley caught the youngest staring wide-eyed at the men behind her. "What, McLaughlan?" she asked impatiently. "Why don't you go keep the—"

McLaughlan's partner Yun pointed past Crowley.

Crowley turned to look. By the motions their leader was making, Crowley could tell they were preparing to go in. She took a step forward, raising her hand in protest. One of the men started to raise his rifle in her direction, and she stopped. She heard angry muttering among the other officers.

Staring at the black-clad team of men, Crowley ran down her entire repertoire of invective. When that didn't make her feel any better, she started improvising.

Merrin took his finger off the Send button of his radio for a moment. "Hey, Edra, do you mind? I'm still trying to convince the duty officer at the local PDC station we got a situation here."

She pointed mutely and grabbed for her radio. He turned, stiffened in shock and depressed the Call button on his radio again.

"Mister," he said coolly but with a trace of real anger now, "I say again, we've got some military force or other here who won't identify themselves."

Crowley watched four of the men peel off from the rest of the group and take off at a trot, two down Peel Street and two down 7th.

"They're tryin' to flank," she muttered as she opened a line to Dispatch.

"In my estimation," Merrin continued—and now Crowley clearly heard the sarcasm—"they're about to commence an assault on whoever their objective is. Did I mention we're at 7th and Peel and they're carrying heavy laser assault rifles and it's rush hour?" There was a pause. " _Thank_ you."

"Dispatch," Crowley snapped. "Ten-39 Captain Shapiro. _Now._ "

 

 

On board _Ranger One_

1830

 

Doc's face blinked onto Zach's screen again. "Captain, new feed from the police channel." He touched a switch on his control pad, and suddenly radio chatter filled the cockpit. Zach listened, his jaw clenching.

Planetary Defense Corps... more police backup. This may just be about as big a mess as any we've ever landed in.

And, surprising himself a little: Hang on, Gaea. We're coming to help you.

 

  

TelCorp 2

1830 

 

Gaea tensed. What? Who's there?

The kill squad had been quiet for a good ten minutes, ever since the copter's strafing run had failed to flush her out. More sirens wailed, some closer, some distant. Mental senses out, she felt again that someone was hunting her, but—

Goose? No, how could he be here? That's the police. Where are they? Why can't I find them?

She cast about, fighting the panic that rose like bile into her throat. Stop it. Use your ears instead, fool. You've got two of them. She strained to listen. Cars passed; a horn honked; from the street she heard shouted questions and the sound of radios cutting in and out. Closer, closer, descending into calm and quiet: The soft click of a gun barrel against something metal, the scuff of a bootsole on rough permacrete—

She tensed, brought up a ragged shield—and so the first laser blast failed to take her down. And then they were on her and there was no more time to think, only react.

 

 

7th and Peel Streets

1830

 

Crowley spun as the sound of laser fire in the walkway between TelCorp 1 and 2 resounded off the buildings. "Shit! Captain, they—shots fired!"

"I hear it, Crowley," Shapiro said with her usual imperturbability. "We're responding. Just keep them from actually killing anyone. You're doing fine."

From the walkway Crowley clearly heard the sound of a physical blow. "What the he—"

She cut herself off as a man's limp body was flung out of the walkway, flew through the air, and hit the pavement, leaving a trail of blood as it skidded to a stop against a squad car. Yun sprang forward to the figure's side.

Oh my... God... Crowley watched Yun tug the man's helmet loose and stagger back in shock. The helmet clattered to the pavement and rolled into the gutter as Yun pressed one hand to her mouth.

"Captain, stakes are up," Crowley croaked. "I think we got a 187. One of the guys in black."

There was a silence. "Ten-four. Keep the civilians clear and try not to let them blow up any buildings. Shapiro out."

 

 

TelCorp 2

1830

  

Concealed on his fire-escape perch, Goose clenched his jaw as the lasers spoke again. He couldn't see Gaea in her little alcove, but from the amount of heavy laser fire raining down on her from all sides, she wasn't going to be able to fight much longer. He flexed his fists, longing to smash someone.

Keep it together, Gooseman, he told himself firmly. You're not gonna help if you just go busting in there. You've got to wait for the others. Remember, you're not really here.

A dumpster rattled momentarily below and then slammed into two of the men. Goose distinctly heard the crunch of bones breaking and bared his teeth in a predatory smile.

Kick some OPS ass, kid.

 

 

 

On board _Ranger One_

1831

  

Zachary pointed. "There. See that little green patch? That's the place. Set us down there."

"Right, Zach," Niko answered and guided _Ranger One_ into an approach.

Zach took a deep breath and opened a link. "New Corpus Christi PD, this is Galaxy Ranger Captain Zachary Foxx. Looks like you've got a mess down there. Can we lend a hand?"

 

 

7th and Peel Streets

1832

  

The Series Fives sprinted across the park. The sound of laser fire reached them over the hubbub of voices and traffic. One voice rose above the others as Zachary leaped off the curb, followed closely by his team.

" _No_ , I'm not going to help you get your fuckin' camera back, you buttwipe! I'm a little _busy_ here! You're lucky those bozos didn't ventilate you on live Tri-D! McLaughlan, since he now lacks a camera and therefore a reason to be here, would you kindly get this moron _back_ into his car and _out_ of here. _Thank_ you."

The Rangers stopped behind the woman as she finished, and Zach stepped forward into her line of sight. "Officer Crowley?" he said quietly. "I'm Captain Zachary Foxx of the Galaxy Rangers."

She turned and stared up at Zach, blue eyes flinty. "Yeah?" she responded. She glanced past Zach as Niko and Doc flanked him.

"We're here to assist the New Corpus Christi PD," explained Doc from where he stood at Zach's right. "Sounds like you need it."

Crowley put hands on hips and looked the three of them over. "I don't—" she started.

None of them ever learned what Officer Crowley didn't, for at that moment a shrill, wordless yell echoed from the breezeway.

To Zachary's dismay, Niko launched herself past Crowley and pelted toward the gap between the two office buildings, shouldering aside reporters and police. Zach muttered a curse and shot after her. Shouting behind him told him Doc was close on his heels.

The walkway was empty. Niko stood next to an upended trash dumpster. Looking around himself, Zach saw scorch marks on the walls. "Well, she didn't go down without a struggle," Doc noted quietly, indicating the dumpster.

A muffled shout sounded from the back of the passageway. Niko took off running again.

"Hey! Niko, wait!" Zach overtook her in a few long strides, and together they raced down the walkway.

They burst from between the buildings to see the Mongoose, engines at idle, its bulk taking up the back quarter of the parking lot. Its flat black paint seemed to draw in light and not let it out again. The members of the squad stood by it, some at guard, some helping the injured to climb up. Two were lifting a man onto a stretcher as the three teammates watched.

Laser rifles turned their way as Doc and Niko spread out to either side of Zach. He saw Gaea, struggling weakly, draped over one man's shoulder in a fireman's carry. He could see even from several yards away that her hands were cuffed.

As a second member of the squad moved to drag Gaea down, the apparent leader stepped forward. "You don't have clearance to be here," he said coldly. His eyes bored into Zachary's. "I suggest you leave now."

"Like hell!"

Zach turned his head sharply at the sound of Goose's voice to see his youngest team member poised on the fire escape of TelCorp 1.

 

 

Goose snarled, cold rage suffusing him, and leaped down from the fire escape. One of the men cursed, and a few of the rifle barrels turned toward him.

"One chance," he said coldly. "Put her down. Now. And leave."

As the men set her on her feet, Gaea shook her head, expression dazed. Her head sagged as if its weight were too much for her to support. One of the soldiers grabbed the back of her tunic and twisted to force her upright. Faintly Goose heard it tear.

Gaea! Goose shouted in his mind. Fight them, girl! We can't help you if you can't help yourself!

He saw her head twitch, and then her eyes rose to meet his across the distance. Gaea looked around at the men, the copter, the guns; looked down at her cuffed hands, and her face twisted in terror.

"No!" One of the men reached to silence her. Her eyes swung to him and he dropped in his tracks, but she shook her head again as if in weariness. Goose felt her panic spiraling up their link, felt it battering at his defenses. A medic appeared in the open hatch of the Mongoose, late-summer light glancing off something in her hand.

An injection gun.

From some great distance Goose heard Niko say urgently, "Touch your badge, Shane. Help me. Help me _now_!"

Niko's hand gripped his shoulder. Eyes fixed on Gaea, he touched his badge. The silver-gold bubble of Niko's shield began forming up around the team.

Gaea's forehead creased in pain. She struggled in the grasp of the soldier who held her. Another stepped forward, and together the two began to drag her into the Mongoose. The engines began to cycle up. She saw the medic and what the medic held.

" _No_..." Gaea whispered. And then, "NO!"

The Mongoose blew up.

 

 

 

7th and Peel Streets

1833 

 

The blast rolled over the buildings, rattling windows across the street and sending reporters and cops alike diving for cover. TelCorp 1 shuddered. The sounds of breaking glass nearly drowned out the screams of terror from bystanders and news crews. Once the glass stopped flying, Crowley raised her head to meet Merrin's eyes.

"I told you we shoulda followed them!" she yelled furiously. "They went and fuckin' blew up a building!"

Even in this situation he had the temerity to laugh, though it didn't seem to hold much amusement. "That wasn't a building that blew and you know it, Edra," he retorted, scrambling to his feet. "Although," he said ruefully, looking up at TelCorp 1, "a building caught the blast—and good thing, too, or we'd all be in bad shape. What a mess. Come on. We better start damage control." He helped her to her feet and then paused to look past her. "Looks like the PDC finally got their butts over here. Primo. Just in time to start sweepin'." Crowley turned to watch the blue-clad Planetary Defense Corps squad as they dogtrotted down the 7th Street sidewalk and crossed Peel without breaking stride. Yun and McLaughlan began to circulate in the crowd, checking on bystanders and reporters. Espinoza shook off his paralysis and knelt beside a hysterically sobbing man, speaking calmly to him. Walkowiak and her partner Farber sprinted by, heading for a woman whose right hand, clenched tight around her left wrist, was beginning to drip red onto the 'crete. Quesada trotted toward Sterling in answer to her shout for assistance.

Distantly Crowley heard the sound of fire trucks. She blew out a breath and raised her radio to check in.

Suddenly a clamor of voices rose from beyond the police barriers. "The Rangers!" "Sir! Sir—uh, Ranger... Hartford! Can you tell us what happened back there!"

Crowley whirled. From the breezeway two of the Rangers emerged—the black man and the auburn-haired woman, who seemed to stagger a bit even with the support of her teammate's arm. The man looked around, his attention finally settling on Crowley, and he and the woman made their way over to where she stood with Merrin.

"Excuse me, Officer," the man said quietly. The woman just leaned on his arm, looking exhausted. "I'm Ranger Hartford. This is Ranger Niko. We're gonna need a forensics squad back there in a bit... and a coroner's car, I'm afraid. I'm no doctor, but looks to me like those folks in black were all killed. We need medical techs, too, of course, just in case we've got any survivors. But most of them were in that Mongoose when it went up, and there's not much left of them." 

Crowley groaned.

"Shit." Merrin sighed. "What happened?"

Hartford's friendly expression darkened. "Somebody got hold of a parahuman kid, looks like somebody's illegal experiment, but we can't say for sure... and abused her," he answered. "And that—" he indicated the TelCorp complex with a tilt of his head— "is the result. Our captain is getting started back there on recording the scene, but he ordered me to get Niko back to our ship." He patted her shoulder gently. "If it hadn't been for her, we'd probably all be dead, too."

Crowley stared at him.

"Psychic shield," Hartford said cheerfully, waggling his fingers in the air. Crowley stared at the motion before jerking her eyes back to his face. "Fantastic in battles, let me tell you."

Niko sighed. "Doc?" she said mildly. "I'd really like to sit down."

"Wait a minute," Merrin said. "You three are part of the Series Five team."

Hartford and Niko exchanged a resigned look. "Yeah," he admitted with a grin that Crowley, even in her current grouchy state, had to admit was charming. "I guess our reputation precedes us. Again. Anyway, I need to help Niko to the ship and then get back... there. Would you mind calling in the med squad for us? We don't wanna clutter up your airwaves. Bad for public relations."

He tossed the last over his shoulder as he and Niko stepped through the barrier and were immediately thronged by reporters and camera operators. As the two Series Fives made their laborious way across the street, news hounds trailing after them like the tail of some anthropomorphic comet, Crowley heard Hartford's voice above the buzz: "Hey, man! What part of 'No comment' do you not understand?"

Crowley looked at Merrin.

"Yeah," he agreed.

"I didn't _say_ anything."

"And?" He opened a link. "Dispatch, 80225 here requesting 11-41, 10-55—"

Crowley turned again, slowly surveying the scene, and so she was the only one who saw the tall blond man in black striding across the grass of Renner Park, cradling in his arms a young woman half-clad in the rags of some kind of hospital uniform.

Crowley froze, staring. He had slipped along Bailey, she realized—the little alley that served as a back entrance from Alder Street to the TelCorp parking lot, though the gate was supposed to be kept locked. From Alder he'd obviously wound his way among the buildings on the other side of the street, knowing that no one would be looking in his direction. And Hartford and Niko were doing a Class-A job of keeping the press occupied.

Crowley clenched her jaw in anger and drew breath to call Merrin's name.

The Ranger—who else could he be?—turned his head and looked at her... and she let her breath out again.

Edra Crowley watched as the tall man made his way to a nondescript aircar sitting in the Renner Park lot, sighed, and turned back to her partner.

"Yo, Judah! We got the med squad on the way or what?"

 

 

On board _Ranger One_

2049

 

Under Doc's hands _Ranger One_ lifted gently off the grass of Renner Park and began climbing. Zach watched the lights of the high rises recede and ran a hand over his face, closing his eyes in exhaustion.

"Long day, huh, Captain?"

Zach glanced at Doc. The hacker looked tired, only a hint of his usual humor gleaming in his dark eyes.

"Yeah. Long day. Long week." Zach turned his head to glance back at Niko, drooping and asleep in the auxiliary seat at the back of the cockpit. He snorted softly. "That's one way to get out of the paperwork."

Doc's teeth flashed in a grin. "I'll take the paperwork, thanks anyway." He sobered and gave Zach a sidelong glance. "Captain... I hope you feel like you did the right thing."

Zach felt his jaw clench at the memory: Goose emerging from the wreckage of the Mongoose, Gaea sobbing weakly in his arms; her hoarse scream as Zach touched her to check her pulse; her eyes maddened with terror...

He shook his head to push away the image and caught a worried look from Doc. He forced a smile.

"Yeah, Doc," he answered quietly. "We did the right thing. Now let's go home and falsify some case reports. I want to see my kids."

Doc laughed. "Aye, aye, Captain. GV, best speed for BETA Mountain."

The white ship arced across the sky to carry them home.


	17. Chapter 17

Elsewhere

8/6/2098

 

A beam of afternoon sun caught dust motes as it streamed through the office window unnoticed by the man in the hoverchair. Outside, trucks hauled cargo from the supply plane parked on its landing pad and uniformed men and women scurried to and fro, but the four walls of the office held only order and quiet.

"Insert HTZ33 at locus 7q36.1 and run simulation."

The computer beeped in acknowledgement. Silence settled over the office, broken only by the soft hiss of a breather as it forced air into the man's lungs. A coffee cup sat ignored, its contents long since cold, on the desk near the man's right hand. Several minutes passed before the computer beeped again. The man leaned forward as data poured across the screen, and then he settled back with a frown.

"Again," he mused. "Still the chemical imbalance. —Computer, note: HTZ33 produced unsatisfactory results at locus 7q36.1. Insert—" The chime of an incoming comm message drowned out the computer's answering beep and cut short his command. He touched a key, and the screen split. A young man's face blinked into the left-hand frame.

"Latham here," he said curtly. "What is it, Delacruz?"

The young man swallowed, his coffee-colored skin gone pale. "Uh, Dr. Latham—I'm sorry to report that, uh, that Batch 27883 was apparently—damaged in shipping on the way from Texas. Sir."

On the right armrest, Latham's hand curled into a fist. "Damaged."

"Uh, yes, sir. Uh, it looks like the coolant hose for the nutrient pump got crimped somehow, and so, uh—"

"The pump stopped. Of course." A muscle in Latham's jaw flexed. "How many of the fetuses were affected?"

Delacruz swallowed again. "I, uh... Sir, of the thirty, nine are dead and the rest are severely damaged. We're trying to find out how it happened now." He flinched, obviously expecting an explosion. "I'm sorry, sir," he almost whispered.

"Yes," Latham said quietly. "I understand. Thank you, Mr. Delacruz. Report to me at once when you're done." He cut the connection.

Coffee splashed across the rug. Thrown with insufficient force to reach the far wall, the cup fell with a soft thump to the floor. And Latham, rigid with frustrated fury, clenched his hands around the armrests of his chair.

His eyes narrowed suddenly, and his face grew thoughtful. Staring at the coffee cup lying far too close to his motorized chair, he slowly let his hands relax. He straightened, resolved and once again calm.

"Computer, access latest data on tissue and nerve replacement technologies," he ordered. "Onscreen." Windows opened on his workstation, and he stared at the data, intent.

"Computer, comm on. —Mr. Hunter," he said crisply, eyes never leaving the screen. "Report."

 

 

BETA Mountain, Earth

8/9/2098, 1416

  

Zachary Foxx rubbed one hand over his face and made a small, resigned gesture with the other.

"I'm sorry, Captain Dansky," he said. "That's really all there is to tell you. We brought Nicole Galloway—or I should say, the girl using that name—back to Earth, she disappeared from BETA Mountain, and next thing we knew she was blowing up someone's merc squad along with parts of three buildings in downtown New Corpus Christi. There are no records of her on Earth. We're hoping to trace her DNA to whoever it was who created her, because she was obviously an illegal construct. We're guessing it might be an illegal clinic running with black-market designs, but so far we've got no leads. We're as much at a loss as you, sir. I know that's not much to take back to the mayor."

Karel Dansky sighed. "So what you're saying is that there's nothing to add to the report?"

"That's about it," Zach agreed.

Dansky let one corner of his mouth quirk in a sardonic smile. "I don't suppose the chief of police in New Corpus Christi is any happier."

Zach laughed shortly. "No, sir, you 'don't suppose' correctly. Captain Shapiro is definitely not happy. You had a fire, Captain—and a few deaths, of course, not to minimize them. She had heavy laser assault rifles discharged inside city limits, and that poor abused parahuman girl destroyed more than one office building during rush hour. The Planetary Defense Corps had to be called in to help clean up the mess. The captain's been on the comm at least once a day since then, wanting answers, and I don't have any more to give her than I have for you."

"Well." Dansky sighed again. "Your final report is filed here, Captain Foxx. Thank you for your help."

"I'm sorry we couldn't do more, sir."

Dansky waved away Zach's words. "No need to apologize. You were doing your job. As far as I'm concerned, you and your team are welcome in Mars City any time. If we can ever help you, please let us know."

"The same for us," Zach answered.

Dansky smiled, the first real smile Zach had seen from the man. "Oh, Captain—Detective Lee had a message for one of your team members, Ranger Niko. 'Maybe next time,' she said. I'm afraid I don't know what she meant."

Zach laughed. "I don't either, Captain, but I'm sure Niko will. Thanks again. Zachary Foxx out."

The comm went dark, and Zachary leaned back in his chair with a sigh.

Lies on lies, he thought sadly. I don't like where this is taking us. I wish you were with me, Eliza... Now and always.

 

 

 

BETA Mountain, Earth

10/14/2098, 1828

  

The setting sun slanted over the terrace outside Niko's quarters, but the pavement still held some of the heat of the day. Her loose gown draped over the cushions as Niko settled into her lounge chair and leaned back with a sigh.

She stared out at the desert for a while, sifting through thoughts and memories, before picking up the letter that lay in her lap. She ran her eyes over Audra Miles' tidy writing and smiled. A vacation on Daibar? It'd be nice to see Mistwalker again, but I could do without the bugs...

"Niko?"

She started violently and turned in her seat. A black-clad figure separated itself from the shadow of a support pillar and stepped forward.

"Shane," she said in surprise. "When did you get back?"

"Just now. Thought I'd come say hello."

Niko smiled. "Hello. Please, sit," and she indicated the chair next to her lounge.

Goose ambled over and perched himself on the edge of the seat. Inwardly she frowned, for his face was drawn and weary. But he seemed content only to share her company, so she held her tongue. They watched the sun setting in companionable silence. Idly Niko focused her mind to lift a match from the tin box just inside the door and strike it on the pavement. With a thought she used it to light the old-fashioned hurricane lanterns sitting against the terrace wall and then dropped the match into the flame to burn.

There was a brief silence.

"How is she, Shane?"

He paused for a long moment. "She's good," he answered. Slowly a smile spread over his face.

Niko suppressed a brief—and totally irrational, she told herself firmly—flash of jealousy. "She's recovered from what Latham did, then?" she asked softly.

"You'd hardly know her, Niko," Goose said with a kind of quiet delight. "She makes jokes, she laughs—damn, that girl's got a sense of humor! We..." He shook his head and chuckled. "I'm starting at the wrong end of the story."

"Doc's plan worked?"

"Oh yeah. We clocked out as Elma and Gooseman and came back into Earthspace under a different registry. Remind me to set up getting back at Doc for that, by the way."

"What?"

"How would _you_ like to be named Wilbur Hellman?"

Niko couldn't hold back a giggle. "Not very well," she admitted.

"Yeah, me neither. After we left Corpus Christi—and that damn snooty rental-car onboard AI—we took out for Kirwin." Goose fell quiet. Shoulders bowed, he rested his forearms on his knees and stared down at his hands.

"Her recovery went well?"

"Yeah," he answered slowly and paused again. "Dr. Keimo really—Niko, it was—" He broke off with a choked sound and turned his face away from the light.

Niko heard his roughened breathing and saw his shoulders jerk once or twice. She reached out, gently took his hand, and sat quietly with him as he let go the tension and the pain.

The sky had darkened further and the stars had begun to come out before Goose rubbed a hand tiredly over his face and unbent from his hunched posture. He squeezed her hand lightly in unspoken thanks and released it.

"The deprogramming was rough," he said quietly. "She went through hell, Niko. She went through it twice, once for real and once in her memories. But I could see when she started to get better—slept through the night, stopped jumping at shadows, stopped... crying so much." He clenched his fists, relaxed them. "Dr. Keimo gave her recordings to listen to, to build back up what OPS tore down. But even if she listens to them every day for the rest of her life, I don't think she'll ever stop being afraid of Latham. And for that I want to see his hide nailed to the wall."

"I know, Shane," she answered softly, and paused. "You said... she laughs."

He smiled, a subtle quirk of the corners of his mouth. "Yeah. She laughs. She likes doughnuts and curry and pickles, though not all together—" he grinned at Niko's laugh— "she plays chess like a fiend, she's curious about everything. I took her shopping."

_"Shopping?"_ She stared incredulously at him. "Shane—you _hate_ shopping."

He laughed self-consciously. "She thought I was nuts, too, but—Niko, the kid's never had a decent outfit of her own. Everything in that little bag of hers was made over from somebody else's clothes. So I told her I didn't have another kid sister to spend my money on and dragged her to the stores."

Niko stifled a laugh.

"Oh—um..." Goose looked awkwardly at her and rummaged in his shirt pocket. "She... wanted you to have this. We saw it in a shop window and, uh..."

Niko blinked at the little paper packet he laid in her palm. "Goose," she said in surprise. "You didn't have to—" She broke off. "Thank you," she added quietly. The paper rustled softly as she unwrapped it. "Oh..." she breathed, staring down at the tiny golden locket inside. The delicate engraving caught the flickering light of the lamps, and the fine chain glimmered softly as she lifted it out of the tissue. From the gold, warmed by the heat of Shane's body, rose images: a shy young man in his Victorian best; the sweet smile of a black-haired young woman; a grey-haired lady, small and fragile with age. She blinked in shock. This is almost two hundred years old, she realized. It must have been fabulously expensive. Niko smiled wryly, softly, and looked up at Goose. "She chose it?"

He reddened. "Yeah, I guess," he mumbled.

"Thank you, Goose—and my thanks to her, too." She hid another smile and fastened the delicate chain around her neck as he looked away.

"So... you've heard my side of things," he noted. "What's been happening Earthside?"

Niko gazed peacefully at a lamp, its light flickering in a vagrant breeze that sprang up and died in a moment. "We got back from New Corpus Christi several hours after you left and gave our report to the commander. The skin and hair and blood samples Gaea gave us backed up the official statement that she had died in the explosion." Niko paused thoughtfully. "You know, it's very rare that I find anything worth falsifying a report for."

He quirked one corner of his mouth again. "Yeah, I know."

"The fuss died down after awhile, but for a few days the news media were full of theories and speculation."

"Yeah, a constant stream of 'No comment' won't keep the public's attention for long," he observed dryly. "You three come in for any flack?"

Niko shook her head. "Commander Walsh was very angry that they took her right from BETA Mountain, you know. He doesn't like anyone making us look bad." She met his eyes with a little smile. "I don't think it took him very long to decide to support Doc's idea. Zachary's been great, too; not a word about falsifying case reports and the rest of it, and he's been handling all the contacts with Captain Dansky and Captain Shapiro."

He smiled in return and said, "And to think I used to think Zach couldn't keep a secret." They sat quietly for a while.

"Is she settled, then?" she asked finally.

"Yeah. Doc's program worked like magic, as usual. She picked a name, we plugged it in, and that thing went to town. She's got a complete history—and every one of you can say in all honesty that you have no idea where she's living or what name she's using." A dark expression flickered across his face. "And me... I'm used to keeping secrets." He looked down at his hands again—and when he looked up at her again a smile blazed in his eyes.

"I did it, Niko," he told her softly. " _We_ did it. She's free."


	18. Epilogue

Elsewhere

10/20/2098, 1419 local time

 

 

The young woman trudged down the dirt road. Heat beat down on her back from the cloudless lemon-yellow sky. She shifted the bag she carried over one shoulder, pushed back her straw hat, and squinted ahead at the crossroads.

The clopping of horses' hooves sounded faintly from the road behind. She stiffened momentarily and then stopped, touching fingertips to the locket hidden under her shirt. Unclipping a canteen from the belt at her hip, she took a sip of water and turned to face the approaching wagon.

The burly driver called out as the wagon drew near. "Whoa, Dodger! Whoa, Brownie!" He pulled on the reins, and the horses slowed and halted. He looked down at her through the settling dust, a wide smile creasing his sun-browned, open face and lighting his brown eyes. "You headed into town, miss? Could I offer you a lift?"

She hesitated, and he laughed suddenly and removed his hat. "You'll be thinking my mother raised me in a barn! How d'ye do? I'm Matthew Burnham. I live about twenty miles outside town with my wife and children. You new in these parts?"

She blinked. "Thank you," she said quietly. "I think... I'd appreciate the ride." She climbed easily onto the wagon seat and settled into place as he cracked the reins.

The wagon creaked into motion, and Matthew Burnham turned to smile down at her.

"You named your horse Dodger?" she asked quickly to forestall any questions.

He chuckled. "My son's idea. Doesn't make much sense till you try coming at the blame horse with a harness, and then it makes plenty!" He glanced at her again. She cast her eyes on her lap and caught a look of understanding from the corner of her eye. The kindliness she sensed caught at her heart.

The trip to town passed quietly. Matthew Burnham made no demands on her, simply pointing out the landmarks they passed and chatting lightly about small matters. As the wagon turned up the town's main street, he asked, "You heading for the hotel, miss?"

"Yes, thank you."

He pulled the horses up in front of one of the several stores on the street and pointed to a building a few doors down. "Max charges fair rates and his place is clean. You need any help, just ask him to get hold of me, you hear?"

She stared at her lap, pushing down the tears that threatened. "Thank you," she whispered, and climbed down quickly, halfheartedly brushing dust off her jeans.

She felt him watching after her. "Miss," he said gently, "I didn't catch your name."

A laugh bubbled up from somewhere. "I didn't throw it," she said wickedly, tossed him a wink, and half-ran down the sidewalk. From behind her she felt puzzlement and amusement in equal measures.

At the door of the Frontier Hotel, she whirled to face him. "Mr. Burnham," she called, "thank you for the lift into town. My name—" She grinned "—my name is Lia Preston!"

A little of Shane's laughter held in her heart, she turned and went inside.


End file.
